MA S TER 
 NEGA TIVE 
 NO. 93-81223 
 
MICROFILMED 1993 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK 
 
 as part of the 
 "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" 
 
 Funded by the 
 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 
 
 Reproductions may not be made without permission from 
 
 Columbia University Library 
 
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT 
 
 The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United 
 States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or 
 other reproductions of copyrighted material. 
 
 Under certain conditions specified In the law, libraries and 
 archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other 
 reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the 
 photocopy or other reproduction is not to be used for any 
 purpose other than private study, scholarship, or 
 research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a 
 photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of fair 
 use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. 
 
 This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a 
 copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order 
 would involve violation of the copyright law. 
 
AUTHOR: 
 
 HEBBERD, STEPHEN S. 
 
 TITLE: 
 
 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 
 
 PLACE: 
 
 [NEW YORK?] 
 
 DA TE : 
 
 [190- 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 
 PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 Master Negative # 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET 
 
 Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 
 
 r 
 
 ;108 
 
 |Z3 
 
 ■ 
 
 Restrictions on Use: 
 
 : 
 
 T^rff^^frnmrnmrn^mmmmmtmimn 
 
 lIeb]>ord, otcplien Soutiiric, 1841- 
 
 »M1, 
 
 xno non pniIono-.},y ^by^ G. G. Hebbord... 
 York? 100- ? J 
 
 [Hew 
 
 1901."'"'"' ^''°'''' ''^"' '""" P^'^^°-'^°P'^y °^ hictory. 
 
 Volune of pninnhlots 
 
 I 
 
 covor tit]o, p. t--'3]-^'00. 22 cm in 25^ om. ' 
 
 Addod )nlf tiUo mco: Supplenont to The sci- 
 ence of j)hnos;oi.!iY. 
 
 TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA 
 
 FILM SIZE: 3S~y??^ REDUCTION RATIO:__/_/^ 
 
 IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA QlP IB IIB 
 
 DATE FILMED: ^h±1_fS.^ INITIALS 
 
 HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRIDGE. cf 
 
1% 
 
 
 r 
 
 Association for information and image Management 
 
 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100 
 Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 
 
 301/587-8202 
 
 Centimeter 
 
 12 3 4 5 
 
 nil lllllllllllllUllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 
 
 T 
 
 Inches 
 
 TTT 
 
 ^ 
 
 6 7 8 
 
 iiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliii 
 
 I I I 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 mm 
 
 iiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiil 
 
 TTT 
 
 1.0 
 
 Lm i2-8 
 
 |43 
 
 ■Uku 
 
 1.4 
 
 |2.5 
 2.2 
 
 2.0 
 1.8 
 
 1.6 
 
 I.I 
 
 1.25 
 
 TTT 
 
 m 
 
 i 
 
 \' 
 
 MfiNUFRCTURED TO RUM STfiNDPRDS 
 BY fiPPLIED IMRGE. INC. 
 
 
 <t 
 
 <6 
 
.ill 
 
 I 
 
 V 
 
 if, \\ 
 
 §1 
 
 >. 
 
 I 
 
^ 
 
 
 w / 
 
 THE 
 
 NEW 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ^ 
 
 S. S. HEBBER.D. 
 
 CHESTERFIELD. ILL. 
 
bt 
 
 SUPPLEMENT 
 
 I 
 
 Pliilo^oply 
 
THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 
 f> 
 
 \ 
 
 Preliminary Observations. 
 
 Let it be well understood that I do not here 
 pretend to construct a new system of philosophy. 
 Such a construction will demand th^ work of 
 many thinkers laboring throughout the present 
 century of which I shall see at best but the bare 
 beginning. My task must be confined to a 
 rough sketching of the point of departure and 
 the general direction which this philosophic de- 
 velopment must pursue. 
 
 And at the outstart let me try to disarm one 
 or two prejudices. A distinguished American 
 writer has set it forth, almost as an axiom that 
 It is a mere waste of time to seek for any really 
 new system of metaphysics. That is certainly 
 an amazing proposition. Thorough agnosticism, 
 if not satisfactory, is at least intelligible. Possi- 
 bly human reason will finally determine to aban- 
 don all search for a science of thought as hope- 
 less. But to a believer in evolution it se^ms 
 only foolishness to say that mankind is doomed 
 to forever pursue paths of thought which have 
 
 _^..'\y\jL,-0 
 
 ^T> 
 
 a 
 
 Li? 
 
316 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 317 
 
 been proved by the experience of three thousand 
 years to lead only to endless and barren dispute. 
 But there is another kind of prejudice which 
 I am far more anxious to disarm. It is that of 
 g-enuine idealists who will probably scorn any 
 criticism of their unscientific methods as an at- 
 tack upon those eternal verities which idealism 
 lias sought to maintain. Those verities are as 
 sacred to me as to them. The idealistic tendency 
 which has been but a mere undertone for the last 
 four hundred years, is to be the dominant note 
 of human development during the present cen- 
 tury and many others to come. That, it seems 
 to me, is fully proved in the Philosophy of His- 
 tory. Criticism here is directed solely agamst 
 the idealistic method in times past— the method 
 of "Maya," of "transcendental illusions" and 
 -phenomenality." This method seems to sup- 
 pose that certainty is a sort of lump the more of 
 >vhich is subtracted from things seen, the more 
 there will be to add to things unseen. But that 
 is a grave mistake. All experience both m the 
 CJrient and the Occident shows that the f^nal out- 
 come of such a process is purely skeptical and 
 pessimistic. And it is my hope to show here that 
 what is really valid and valuable in idealism can 
 be reached in a better way, by a strict inductive 
 method and without affronting the primary con- 
 victions of mankind. 
 
 It would be very desirable too to disarm the 
 
 natural prejudice against the seeming "arro- 
 gance" of the claims here made. But that is 
 probably impossible. Really, no one can be less 
 disposed than myself to pretend to any rivalry 
 with the great masters of thought, who saw so 
 much amidst a darkened and generally pre-sci- 
 entific environment. But, nevertheless, the old 
 metaphysics is dead; in the process of human ev- 
 olution the time has come for a new framing of 
 our fundamental conceptions; and somehow it 
 seems to have devolved upon me to begin the 
 ATork. 
 
 Assumption not the Basis of Thought. 
 
 It seems best to begin by considering the chief 
 objections which have already been urged 
 against the fundamental principle underlying my 
 Philosophy of History. And first of all it has 
 been objected by an eminent educator and au- 
 thor that this principle amounts only to the fa- 
 miliar truth that we must assume a rational con- 
 nection of things. 
 
 How easy it is to misunderstand! One main 
 design of my work was to over-turn this whole 
 theory of necessary assumptions lying at the 
 basis of thought. That theory has played a great 
 part — but an evil one, it seems to me — in all 
 modern speculation. It has appeared in differ- 
 ent shapes, in Descartes' doctrine of "innate 
 ideas," in the Scottish dogma of intuitions, in the 
 Kantian system of a priori forms and categories. 
 
318 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 But in every shape the theory fails to accomplish 
 the task for which it was set. It provides no sol- 
 id basis of certainty. On the contrary, it dis- 
 credits rather than guarantees our primary con- 
 victions. To say as Kant does, for instance, 
 that we are mysteriously compelled by some pe- 
 culiarity of our mental make-up, to believe cer- 
 tain propositions, is to instantly excite th« suspi- 
 cion that these beliefs are only subjectively true. 
 They may be valid for us, and still only delu- 
 sive and false. Reason cannot b€ really com- 
 pelled except by a reason. How vainly Kant 
 himself struggled against this ''subjectivity" is 
 well known, nor has any one since his day suc- 
 ceeded better. This curious wobbling of the 
 mind between "the phenomenally true" and "the 
 ontologically true," between believing and disbe- 
 lieving the same proposition at the same time, 
 seems to be the gist of modern philosophy. 
 
 For more than forty years this shuffling back 
 and forth between two kinds of truth has seemed 
 to me, not only logically but morally indefensi- 
 ble. All that time I have sought to find and elu- 
 cidate some principle that would do away with 
 these necessary assumptions. Surely there 
 must be some better criterion of truth, some 
 sounder basis of certainty than this motley crowd 
 of intuitions, forms and categories for whose va- 
 lidity no other reason can be rendered than that 
 they are compulsory beliefs. All the more when 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 319 
 
 it is confessed that they are not after all compul- 
 sory but can be easily set aside by distinguishing 
 between two kinds of truth. 
 
 And now it is objected that this principle of 
 mine is really nothing more than one of these fa- 
 miliar assumptions. Let us see. 
 
 That fundamental principle is that all thinking 
 is a relating of cause and effect. In other words, 
 causality is not merely one among the many cat- 
 egories of reason, but is the one implied in all the 
 rest and from which all are derived. It is the es- 
 sence of thought as distinguished from mere feel- 
 ing. In fine every complete affirmation made by 
 the mind is, either explicitly or implicitly, an af- 
 firmation of causality. 
 
 Of course this principle remains to be estab- 
 lished. It is the object of this supplement to es- 
 tablish it — not deductively, for that would de- 
 mand some wider principle from which it could 
 be deduced, but inductively, by a strict examina- 
 tion of the various processes into which thinking 
 divides itself. But if it can be thus proved, then 
 it seems to me our present object is easily 
 gained. We shall readily find an indisputable 
 criterion of, not merely subjective, but objective 
 truth. The existence of causal relations between 
 all objects of thought will no longer be a mere 
 assumption hanging in the air but a demonstrat- 
 ed truth supported by a very simple and cogent 
 proof. 
 
320 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 321 
 
 For if all thinking is a relating of cause and 
 effect then the denial of causality logically in- 
 volves the complete collapse of the whole think- 
 in- process. No matter in what form you put 
 yo'Lr denial, the same result inevitably follows. 
 Do you say that casuality is subjective and not 
 objective? The answer is that both subject and 
 object involve in essence the idea of casuality and 
 become empty words when that idea is cancelled. 
 Or do you say that causal relations do not really 
 exist? But to exist is, as I hope to show, to be 
 in causal relation with somewhat or other, when 
 that relation is cancelled, the word existence has 
 lost its meaning.. In fine, all propositions con- 
 cerning the true or the false would become ab- 
 surd; for, as will be shown when we come to 
 treat' of judgments, the essence of every affirma- 
 tion is to affirm some causal relation between 
 subject and predicate. Thus the whole fabric of 
 thought would collapse, would fall into a tangled, 
 useless mass like a fabric of cloth from which the 
 woof had been withdrawn. 
 
 Perhaps this proof will be made clearer by 
 noting its parallelism with that mathematical 
 kind of demonstration called a reductio ad ab- 
 surdum. The geometer sometimes proves his 
 theorem by showing that its denial involved the 
 denial of some universally accepted proposition; 
 for instance, that the whole is greater than any 
 of its parts. The demonstration in the present 
 
 case is even more thorough: for the denial of 
 causality involves the denial not merely of some 
 one particular proposition but of all possible 
 propositions which the mind can frame. It in- 
 volves the extinction of thought. 
 
 This proof is as yet hypothetical. It depends 
 upon the establishment of my fundamental prin- 
 ciple that all thinking is a relating of cause and 
 effect. But ^ven now it ought to be evident that 
 my doctrine is not that of some "universal and 
 necessary" assumption. It aims to substitute for 
 that assumption a demonstrated theorem. 
 
 Note still further that in this argument I have 
 simply made explicit what has always been im- 
 plicit in the human mind. The belief in caus- 
 ality has always been something more llian a 
 mere assumption supported by naught but its al- 
 leged irresistibleness. From the beginning the 
 human mind has been vaguely conscious that the 
 denial of causality involved the collapse and ex- 
 tinction of all thinking. But the fact was not 
 proved; and therefore speculation easily wander- 
 ed off into th€ wilderness of Kantian subjectivity, 
 etc. Nor can it be proved, I think, except- 
 through the recognition of our fundamental prin- 
 ciple, to-wit, that all thinking is unitary, all its 
 processes but more or less developed forms of 
 relating cause and effect. 
 
 The Nature of Causality. 
 
 A second objection has been urged by others 
 
322 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 and with especial earnestness by a distinguished 
 American writer who has written several very 
 able works from the idealistic point of view. 
 The objection is that I have confounded different 
 kinds of causality. 
 
 To this I answer that distinctions are worthless 
 when made at random and without regard to the 
 real unity underlying them. And one chief de- 
 fect of modern metaphysics is that it has blindly 
 borrowed its distinctions of casuality from the 
 philosophv of a pre-scientif^c age. Wonderful 
 indeed is the genius evinced in the Greek philos- 
 ophy ; especialy the idealism of men like Pythag- 
 oras' and Plato, belonging to a race saturated 
 with materialism, seems almost a miracle ot 
 insight and beauty. But the defect of our 
 modern speculation is that it has been little more 
 than a revamping of this pre-scientific Greek 
 philosophv— the ghost of it, so to speak. Hence 
 our philosophy has never been able to really 
 adapt itself to the revolution in thought effected 
 by modern science. Especially in the present 
 case, it has never risen above an ancient division 
 of causes about as meritorious as the ancient di- 
 vision of the plant-world into trees, shrubs and 
 
 herbs. 
 
 Hence I have sought to subsume these con- 
 fused distinctions under that one uniform type of 
 causality upon which modern science so strenu- 
 cuslv insists. And the terms best fitted to ex- 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 323 
 
 press this common character inherent in all caus- 
 al relations seems to be — a relation of depend- 
 ence. How readily the various distinctions be- 
 tween causes can be assigned their true value by 
 referring them to this relation of dependence, 
 may perhaps be best shown by considering some 
 of the aberrations of idealism and materialistic 
 positivism in regard to casuality. 
 
 (i) Idealism. One of the pregnant errors of 
 idealism has been its failure to note the complex- 
 ity of effects. Let the reader take this for grant- 
 ed, or otherwise seek for the proof thereof given 
 in the Section of this Supplement dealing with 
 Perception. At present I am interested only in 
 the fact that effects arc exceedingly complex, 
 and that therefore we have manv words with va- 
 rious shades of meaning to denote certain differ- 
 ences between the many causes upon which a 
 given effect depends. Thus w^e speak of one 
 cause as the occasion, as the cause most closely 
 connected in time with the effect. Others w^e en- 
 title conditions, as being more remote although 
 often more significant. And one of these condi- 
 tions which happens to be the most conspicuous, 
 we are apt to designate as the cause. But the 
 effect is dependent upon th-em all, whether called 
 occasion, condition or cause. The shades of dis- 
 tinction denoted by the different terms refer 
 merely to differences in the combination of 
 causes; they do not essentially effect that com- 
 
 L 
 
! I 
 
 11 
 
 324 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, 
 show herealK . tne overlooking 
 
 and sufficient cause. 
 
 P..-..,-..-. But .e are also con ron^.d by 
 the positivist who affirms ^^^^^"^s 
 nendence are mere chimeras, that science 
 ^ 1 thL except the uniform succession of 
 Z'^ nothing excq, .^ .^ ^^^^^.^,,^ ^^ 
 
 phenomena /"^ *°^"^^^^ ^^ ^ave thoroughly 
 roSertlHatrof those phenomena con 
 
 _ing which th.^ <1^--^^^^ 
 have not seen that every y ., , „, mialitv 
 •;„ n„ effect ■ it is some attribute or quality 
 
 maintained it can never positiv- 
 
 dchcvdcnt upon that thing, bo that me r 
 
 fst cal not Uke the first step in his scientific ob- 
 
 ^T^t'Ses^h: Stivist insist t- ahlK^gh a 
 .elation of dependence j" some se^e nu^ t per^ 
 Vians be admitted at the start, \ei <* 
 
 See ,„ ,o <,o ";'>vrr;,s""d:'»ct 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 325 
 
 science has consisted in showing Httle by little 
 that every phenomenon is dependent not solely 
 upon the thing from which it has been abstracted 
 but also upon a vast variety of other things. 
 Science is insight into this immense complex of 
 relations of dependence. 
 
 The charge of ambiguity then, in my con- 
 ception cf causality has been more than dis- 
 proved. Not only has it been shown that there 
 is no such incompatibility between the alleged 
 different kinds of causation, as would make it 
 impossible to comprehend them in one genus. 
 More than that, it has been shown that only 
 through this generic or unitary view can we at- 
 tain to any clear insight into the nature and va- 
 lidity of these distinctions. 
 
 The real confusion and equivocalness have 
 been on the part of the old philosophy, which 
 leaving these causal distinctions wholly vague 
 and indefinite, has simply flung them all together 
 in a witches' caldron of dispute and paradox. 
 
 Immanent and Dynamic Casiiality. This es- 
 say is but a tentative — a mere introduction to the 
 Science of Thought; and therefore I shall at- 
 tempt here to interpret only one of these distinc- 
 tions. But it is the most conspicuous and vital 
 one, and the one that will be most glibly urged 
 against my theory of judgment and reasoning. 
 It is the distinction between formal or immanent 
 and efficient or dynamic causality. 
 
S26 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 
 
 In the Cartesian philosophy, especially as fin- 
 ally developed by the marvelous Spinoza, all the 
 emphasis was laid upon causality as immanent. 
 The type of the causal relations was the relation 
 between a substance and its attributes, qualities, 
 etc That was a distinct advance, so far as it 
 negated the pre-scientific Aristotlean view of 
 qualities as themselves occult causes stowed 
 away in things. 
 
 But after Newton's great discovery, we see the 
 emphasis shifting to the idea of causality as force. 
 The first stir of the transition is shown in Leib- 
 niz^s Monadology. As it became more and more 
 evident that the gist of science was insight into 
 the motions of things the greater the stress 
 upon this new dynamic view of causality. The 
 type of the causal relation was no more the rela- 
 tion of substance and attribute as with Spinoza, 
 but the relation of force to motion— force not 
 immanent or fixed in things, but transitive or 
 rather transilient, leaping from object to object 
 and thus producing these motions. And as the 
 older view of causality culminated into Spino- 
 za's materialistic pantheism, so the newer view 
 culminated in the ideal or what would more 
 properly be called the abstract pantheism of the 
 Post-Kantian philosophy. 
 
 The dispute between these two modes of con- 
 ceiving has done much towards bringing the 
 question of causality into its present chaotic 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 327 
 
 state. Every tyro in philosophy knows what in- 
 finite confusion prevails. There are no definite 
 and fixed distinctions ; all is fluid, vague 
 and vacuous. And yet from our pre'sent point of 
 view it seems easy to so interpret these two ap- 
 parently conflicting types of causality as to give 
 to each an exactly definite value and at the same 
 time show their generic unity. 
 
 Here, then, on the one side we have a relation 
 of dependence between qualities and things; on 
 the other side a relation of dependence between 
 motions and things. The average professor of 
 philosophy would remonstrate, off-hand, against 
 confounding two such palpably diverse relations, 
 the one merely ''formal," the other ''efficient" 
 and "dynamic." But we remind him of the Con- 
 servation of Energy — of the scienticfic discovery 
 that all qualities are ultimately reducible to and 
 identical with motions. And then we ask: If 
 attributes and motions are thus identical, how 
 can their relations to things be so essentially dif- 
 ferent? 
 
 It is demonstrable then that there can be no 
 eLential difference in the two cases, although 
 apparently so diverse. But what, then, makes 
 them appear so diverse? I answer: because 
 we are regarding the same relation from two dif- 
 ferent points of view. In the first case— that of 
 substance and accident— we are regarding the 
 quality mainly as dependent upon the thing from 
 
Ii' 
 
 328 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 Avhich it has been abstracted, although perfectly 
 aware that is also dependent upon other things. 
 In the second case, we are regarding the motion 
 mainlv as dependent upon the other things, al- 
 though perfectly aware that it is dependent also 
 upon the thing it is abstracted from. 
 
 We have shown, then, both that the relation is 
 identical and whv it seems so diverse. The proof 
 may be made clearer hereafter. But just as it 
 stands, I think it will be clear and conclusive 
 enough, except to those with whom imagination 
 is so strong and reason so weak that they can 
 think of force only as some sort of muscular pull- 
 ing cr pushing. 
 
 Reason and Cause. Let me also mention 
 briefly the most pregnant of all such distinc- 
 tions,' that between cause and reason. Nowhere 
 have I been able to find a clear-cut and valid ac- 
 count of the difference between these most sig- 
 nificant terms; on the contrary, the utmost con- 
 fusion and the wildest vagaries seem here to 
 prevail For example, an eminent and very 
 thoughtful representative of the newest monism 
 • defines cause as meaning merely motion, and 
 reason as signifying ^the forces of nature, such 
 as gravity, elasticity, etc. The upshot of tha 
 would seem to be to make reasons the only real 
 causes and to convert causes into mere effects, 
 i. r., motions. Many other examples of equally 
 beclouded .views might be given. 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 329 
 
 But one main design of this treatise is to draw 
 a precise and unimpeachable distinction be- 
 tween cause and reason. A deep and exact dif- 
 ference, even opposition, between them — undis- 
 closed in any previous system of speculation — 
 will be demonstrated. And yet even here a uni- 
 tary bond will be found. 
 
 The Fundamental Law of Knozvledge. 
 
 That law is simply this: Causes can be known 
 only through their effects, and conversely, ef- 
 fects can be known only through their causes. 
 In other words we know the objects of thought 
 only in their causal relations to each other. 
 This law is an evident corollary from our funda- 
 mental principle that all thinking is a relating of 
 cause and effect. 
 
 Let it be carefully noted at the outset that this 
 law prescribes solely the method and not the 
 limits of knowledge. Otherwise, the critic may 
 see in it only a reduplicated form of the now 
 prevailing agnosticism: thinking, it may be 
 urged, is thus made to consist in the combining 
 of two unknown quantities. On the contrary, 
 our doctrine clearly understood puts an impass- 
 able barrier before the advance of nescience. 
 For, it shows that all the easy inferences now 
 current concerning ''Relativity" and the ''Un- 
 knowable" are based upon an entire misappre- 
 hension of what knowledge really is. Let us 
 consider this. 
 
X 
 
 330 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 The Fallacy of Resemblance. Thinking, as I 
 hope to show, is under the law of evolution; it 
 rises from the simplest causal judgments, little 
 by little, by processes of composition and de- 
 composition, to more complex and comprehen- 
 sive judgments. But error also is under the law 
 of evolution ; all its fallacies are but more or less 
 developed forms of the Fallacy of Resemblance. 
 Furthermore, the average intellect naturally 
 inclines to judgments based upon mere resem- 
 blance rather than to causal ones. For, they 
 are easier to construct. Man, like any other ani- 
 mal, is governed largely by the Law of Associa- 
 tion—not, as many philosophers imagine, the 
 association of thoughts but of feelings. Auto- 
 matically, without any effort on our part, pres- 
 ent sensations or feelings cohere with images of 
 the past according to those rules of similarity 
 which the Association philosophers have so la- 
 boriously expounded. This process of linking 
 like to like goes on spontaneously; and thus a 
 life of sentiency and suggestion is formed for us 
 which does not differ essentially from the same 
 life in horses or dogs. Attempts at thinking are 
 so suppressed by association of similarities that 
 our judgments, classifications and reasonings 
 are very largely founded upon mere resem- 
 blances. The first and often the last interroga- 
 tory we propound concerning any object is: 
 What does it look like? 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 331 
 
 The fallacy of all such judgments based solely 
 upon resemblance is evident. They have in- 
 herent in themselves their own contradiction. 
 For two objects are never so much alike as not 
 to be unlike in some respects. So that we can 
 say: "This is Hke that," and: "This is )iot like 
 that," with equal truthfulness. 
 
 Judgment and reasoning from resemblance 
 then, show themselves upon bare inspection as 
 tending to fallacy. And yet they have always 
 formed the main staple of metaphysicsal dispu- 
 tation. In dealing with th'e unseen, elusive phe- 
 nomena of thought the temptation is almost ir- 
 resistible to picture them, to clothe them in the 
 shape and semblance of things, to appeal to the 
 imagination and misleading analogies. Hence 
 the midnight that has enveloped the leading 
 problems of the mental life. Our essay will 
 show how the great questions of Space, Time. 
 Perception, Inductions, Self-Consciousness, and 
 Causality itself have been converted into insolu- 
 ble enigmas by this pictorial philosophy. It will 
 show also that the only w^ay out of this wilder- 
 ness of "Relativity'' and "The Unknowable" is 
 through the recognition that all genuine knowl- 
 edge of any object is a knowledge, not of its re- 
 semblances, but of its causal relations. 
 
I 
 
 1 
 
 'Mi 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 333 
 
 II. 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 To Judge is to Abstract. Prior to judgments 
 there must be presentations of sense common to 
 men and other animals, often given perhaps 
 more distinctly and exactly to the mere animal 
 than to the man. But the presentation is only 
 feeling, not thought. It is possible, even com- 
 mon for us to gaze, to smell, to hear, to touch 
 etc., and for the appropriate re-action to be giv- 
 en, to these stimuli, without any act of thought 
 whatsoever. But the process of thinking or 
 judging begins only with a conscious act of an- 
 alysis whereby we abstract from the object pre- 
 sented, one or more of its attributes. No mat- 
 ter now what that presented object may be. 
 Perchance it is but ":Maya," or a transcendental 
 illusion; that question does not concern us here. 
 Nor let any one cavil that we are here estab- 
 lishing an arbitrary distinction betweeen feeling 
 and thought. That objection comes with an ill- 
 grace from any adherent of the old philosophies 
 which have always hopelessly confounded feel- 
 ing and thought, without a serious attempt to 
 make any more than a purely verbal distinction 
 
 between them. But here we have a distinction 
 perfectly clear, simple and precise. Further- 
 more, there are implicit in it the two other fun- 
 damental differences between thought and feel- 
 ing: First, feeling is passive, while thought is 
 active. The sensation of the color or the odor 
 of an object is presented to an animal, even to a 
 caterpillar perhaps as vividly as to us and it is 
 instinctively attracted or repelled thereby. But 
 thought is essentially active; it analyzes the ob- 
 ject presented into two factors and observes the 
 relations between them. Secondly, feeling is 
 stationary; there is no possibility of developing 
 what is purely passive and automatic. But 
 thought is progressive ; and it progresses for the 
 very reason that it is abstractive. For, as I hope 
 to show, this simple act of abstraction is the nu- 
 cleus of all possible forms of mental develop- 
 ment — the tie of consanguinity, so to speak, con- 
 necting the first perceptive judgments of the 
 child with the most profound and universal 
 judgments of science. Other items of difference 
 between thought and feeling might be men- 
 tioned to the same effect. But these are enough 
 I think, to show that we have here a clear-cut 
 distinction furnishing a solid basis for a true 
 science of thought. 
 
 Note now that we have in this primitive act of 
 abstraction the perfect type of what we have de- 
 clared at the outset to be the essence of all 
 
334 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 thinking— to-wit, the establishment of causal re- 
 lations. For, firstly, that which is abstracted upon 
 must alwavs remain absolutely dependent upon 
 the object 'from which it has been abstracted. 
 So patent is this that in all ages logic has issued 
 an emphatic warning against the too common 
 error of disregarding this dependence; of con- 
 ceiving the abstracted element as having an m- 
 dependent, substantial existence apart from the 
 object from which it has been abstracted. Sec- 
 ondly, even those philosophers who seem able 
 to tliink onlv in figures of speech and are there- 
 fore most strenuous concerning the "ei^^ciency 
 or "dynamism" of true, "ontological" causahty 
 must 'see that the object is certainly one of the 
 causes upon which its attributes or properties 
 depend. If not let them read again what was 
 said a few pages back concerning immanent 
 causality. 
 
 Thirdly, in this primary act of abstraction the 
 demands' of our Law of Knowledge are com- 
 pletely fulfilled: the causes cannot be known or 
 even 'thought unrelated to its effects and con- 
 versely the effect apart from its cause. Mani- 
 festly the object is known only through the at- 
 tributes abstracted from and dependent upon it 
 And conversely no one of these dependent attri- 
 butes can be known or thought apart from the 
 object; to try to think it thus apart— as inde- 
 pendent and isolated— is confessedly one of the 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 335 
 
 most childish of logical errors. Each of the two 
 factors, the object or that which is abstracted, is 
 by itself but a semi-thought, fragmentary, sense- 
 less. Only when they are causally connected 
 does a real and distinct meaning emerge. 
 
 Note now that the old philosophy has missed 
 this insight through its passion for the fallacy of 
 resemblance. It has seen the abstracted, the at- 
 tribute only as something like a thing "inher- 
 ent" in the object, sticking in it apparently like 
 a pin in a pin-cushion. From that theory of "in- 
 herence" it is but a step to self-contradiction and 
 ultimate skepticism. But from all this we are 
 saved by simply thinking in terms of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 (2.) To Judge is to Experiment. Philosophy 
 heretofore has taken a very narrow and mislead- 
 ing view of experimentation as a rare and ex- 
 tremely artificial process, for the most part car- 
 ried on only in the laboratories of the learned 
 On the contrary we are always experimenting 
 whenever we are really thinking. For this work 
 Nature has furnished the laboratory in our 
 physical organism. She has provided in the or- 
 gans of sense a wonderfully delicate and com- 
 plex apparatus designed to present before us a 
 particular phenomenon isolated from modifying 
 causes. In vision, for instance, we see only the 
 object; thus one cause of the vision is presented 
 before us, isolated from the other agencies at 
 
''II 
 
 336 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 il 
 
 w 
 
 \ 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 337 
 
 work, the aether waves, the nerve motions, cere- 
 bral changes, etc. If all these were perceived 
 with the object, infinite confusion would result 
 and knowledge be rendered impossible. 
 
 Furthermore, the variety of the organs enable 
 us to vary the experiment. Through the sense 
 of touch, for instance, we can experiment to see 
 how the object behaves under one set of condi- 
 tions; through sight, under another set of con- 
 ditions; and similarly through smell, hearing 
 etc. Thus through a continuous process of ex- 
 perimentation we obtain those simple percep- 
 tive judgments with which the evolution of 
 . thought and knowledge begins. 
 
 Note further that the results thus attained are 
 true inductions. For instance, an object is pre- 
 sented to sight and a particular color appears; 
 the object is removed, the color vanishes. Or 
 the object is touched with the finger, a feeling of 
 resistance is felt; the object is touched no long- 
 er, the feeling disappears. In both cases we 
 have used the '^:Method of Difference," which is 
 universally regarded as the gist of the inductive 
 process. But as conmion speech has confined 
 the term induction to the forming of universal 
 propositions, it is perhaps better to speak of 
 these primary acts of abstraction simply as ex- 
 perimental. 
 
 (3). To judge is to afiirm existence. In this 
 I agree with some recent logicians who lay 
 
 much stress upon the "existential" aspect of 
 judgments. But I wholly reject their interpre- 
 tation and proof of this aspect. Here Mr. Brad- 
 ley's strange juggling with such uncouth dis- 
 tinctions as "Thisness" and "This," may be 
 passed over in silence. But a word must be 
 said concerning a more seductive theory which 
 regards the affirmation of existence as a sort of 
 by-product of feeling — "the reality-feeling," "the 
 feeling envelope of the presentation," etc. (i) 
 That is not merely vague and inconclusive; it is 
 a sheer plunge into the pit of mysticism. A. 
 feeling, so far from proving anything, does not 
 even assert anything. It merely feels and re- 
 sponds automatically to the stimulus. A "feel- 
 ing envelope" will no more justify our belief in 
 reality than it will our belief in the equation of 
 the cycloid. To overlook this, to subvert the 
 distinction between feeling and thought, is to 
 open the door to all fanaticism and vagaries. 
 
 There is a safer and solider ground than that 
 for our belief in reality. The simplest, most 
 primary judgment, as we have seen, affirms a 
 causal relation; and in affirming that it affirms 
 existence. For, whatever is a cause developing 
 an effect, must exist in some shape or other. 
 The nature of this existence is of course a mat- 
 ter to be determined hereafter. 
 
 (J Baldwin. Fragments of Philosophy, 1902. P. 240. seq. 
 
1/7 
 
 .38 THE PHILOSaPHY OF HISTORY. 
 Furthermore, these same logicians have much 
 
 ^ T- !lh a symbol of causal connexion. 
 
 copula IS simpU a sjmuui 
 
 To affirm that "This is, i. e., exists, is then to 
 
 ate. Has not the difficulty vanished m a mo 
 ment? 
 
 Qualitative Judgments. 
 Hitherto we have been regarding only the 
 
 « tv,u evclusive reference of the 
 But we soon see this exciusiv 
 
 The subject is not the sole cause, but a cause. 
 
 Qualitative judgments o-f /^^", ^^7;,^;,^ 
 .Ui4. to this advancing know e^ge of ^ ^cau._^ 
 relation connecting the preaicate 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 339 
 
 causes, besides the subject. When we affirm, 
 for instance, that "this is red," we do not think 
 of the predicate as solely an effect of the subject, 
 but as something adjectival, added to and quali- 
 fying the subject. In fine, there is an implicit 
 reference to the wider field of causality. This, 
 I think, is the chief peculiarity in judgments of 
 quality; in other respects they have the same 
 three-fold character as the perceptive judgments 
 already described. 
 
 Contrast now this theory of judgment with 
 that of the old philosophies which have never 
 been able to see in a quality anything much but 
 its resemblance to other qualities bearing the 
 same name. Firstly, the latter theory shows it- 
 self upon its very face to be vague and self-con- 
 tradictory. Qualities although designated by a 
 common name are rarely precisely alike in dif- 
 ferent things; in the same breath we may say 
 with equal truthfulness that they are alike and 
 they are }iot alike. Secondly, no relation be- 
 tween the predicate and the subject is exhibited 
 except the absurd and impossible one of ''inher- 
 ence." Thirdly and most important of all. Ab- 
 straction—the vital breath of all genuine think- 
 ing — loses its significance and is even put under 
 suspicion as a breeder of vain subtleties. Hegel 
 even wished to create a New Logic wherein **the 
 barren abstract'' should be replaced by ''the 
 concrete," by "the organic"— in fine, by a meta- 
 phor. 
 
340 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 Quantitative Judgments. 
 
 (i). Quantitative judgments are affirmations 
 concerning abstractions. Therein lies their es- 
 sential difference from the judgments previously 
 considered. In the latter, only the predicate is 
 an abstraction and is directly referred to the 
 subject from which it has been abstracted and 
 upon which it depends. In the qualitative judg- 
 ment, as we have seen, there is indeed an im- 
 plicit reference also to other causes besides the 
 subject which is partially disclosed in the very 
 form of this predicate as an adjective and not a 
 verb; but the paramount reference is to the sub- 
 ject. ' But in the quantitative judgment all this 
 is changed. Therein we reach a more highly 
 developed form of the judgm<ent where both 
 subject and predicate are abstractions. 
 
 It is true that this abstract character of the 
 subject is not made very conspicuous in familiar 
 speech. But let us not be blinded by a superfi- 
 cial similarity in form to a real and essential dif- 
 ference in meaning; that is to be victimized by 
 the fallacy of resemblance. When we say: "This 
 rod is five feet long," we mean that the length 
 of the rod equals five feet. And in the mote 
 exact language of science judgments of quanti- 
 ty invariably assume this equational form. 
 ' But in thus defining judgments of quantity, 
 have I not overthrown my fundamental princi- 
 ple that all affirmation is essentially an affirming 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 341 
 
 of a causal relation? By no means. On the con- 
 trary, the way has been prepared for exhibiting 
 a new phase in that evolution of thought where- 
 by we continually ascend towards a wider and 
 at the same tim^e more exact view of causal rela- 
 tion. Let us see. 
 
 (2). The abstractions which form the subject 
 and predicate of a quantitative judgment are ab- 
 stractions from Space and Time. And here 
 we must hold in abeyance that ancient contro- 
 versy over the ideality of space and time. That 
 will be considered in due season. It is enough 
 here to show that the two terms of a quantita- 
 tive judgment are both abstractions from space 
 or time, no matter what the latter may finally 
 prove to be. 
 
 The old philosophy has not clearly seen this, 
 because it has paid little attention to the most 
 fundamental principle of all science — the com- 
 plexity of effects. Take, for example, the dis- 
 tance of a given object. That distance may be- 
 said, in one sense, to be abstracted from the ob- 
 ject; upon that it is dependent at least for its 
 commensurability; an annihilated object would 
 certainly be at no particular distance from the 
 observer. But the distance is also dependent — 
 and ultimately so — upon space; from that it was 
 abstracted and without that it could not exist. 
 And similarily with direction, figure and other 
 spatial abstractions. 
 

 ■ 1 
 
 II 
 
 342 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 Or take the case of numerical abstractions or 
 numbers We affirm, for instance, that there 
 Te seven sheep in the field." Now in a certam 
 Tnse Ihe number seven has been abstractd from 
 he htp; for we have gained it by abstractmg 
 from e^cl sheep the attribute of one-ness or 
 bdng a unit, and have added these unUs to- 
 Zhl But in a far deeper and ^lore pregnant 
 Sse the number is abstracted from and de- 
 "end'nt upon the existence of time; wUhout^ 
 Lccessiv. instants the -t-bermg would be >m 
 possible. Countless examples m.ght be jven 
 to the same eflect. In all cases -'"^-"f ^^j. 
 stractions are, in the largest sense and ult. 
 mately, abstracted from Time; and spat.al ab- 
 Stractions from Space. 
 
 (3). This insight explains the well-kno^^•n fact 
 that the goal of science is H. transfonmmnof 
 qualitative into quantitative H^^"'^- . J^^^ 
 qualities are abstracted entirely from thmgs 
 and therefore thev partake, to some extent at 
 Last of that infinite variability which attaches 
 to things. There is no quality which does not 
 hold wfthin itself some shade of difference from 
 a fmilar quality in another thing. But quarj. 
 tative abstractions, as we have seen, are ultt 
 mately abstracted from space or time, both of 
 which have absolute uniformity, "-hangeable- 
 ness and continuity. And because quantitative 
 affirmations partake of this invariableness and 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 343 
 
 exactitude, it becomes possible for science to 
 attain through them to universal judgments 
 which are mathematically demonstrable. 
 
 Take notice likewise of the concomitant truth 
 which has also just been shown. These quanti- 
 tative abstractions are, in a secondary sense, ab- 
 stracted from and dependent upon concrete ob- 
 jects. By remembering this science has been 
 kept from losing itself in the wilderness of mere- 
 ly abstract speculation. It has always insisted 
 upon verifying its splendid abstractions by 
 showing their exact correspondence with the 
 actual state of things in the world of sense. 
 Thus our theory of quantity seems already to 
 foreshadow and to explain that double crown of 
 science — its two-fold capacity for inconceivably 
 abstract speculation and for strictly verifying its 
 conclusions. 
 
 It may not be amiss to add that our theory of 
 quantity is fortunate in being apparently with- 
 out a rival. The older logicians seem to have 
 early given up the attempt to propound such a 
 theory as hopeless; and Hegel finds it easy 
 enough to show in his Logic that tbeir defini- 
 tions of quantity were but the baldest tautolo- 
 gies. True, Hegel has propounded a theory of 
 his own in which he describes quantity as an 
 early and crude phase of "self-negating negativ- 
 ity." But that fails to comply with a very mod- 
 est demand which we have the right to make 
 
/ 
 
 i 
 
 -.344 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 of every theory : if it does not make clear what 
 was dark, at least it ought not to darken what 
 was clear. 
 
 Universal Judgments, 
 As yet we have treated only of particular 
 judgments, but we come now to a still more dif- 
 ficult problem. How shall we explain and guar- 
 antee the validity of those universal judgments 
 which form the substance of science, and yet 
 seem to lie beyond the bounds of all possible ex- 
 perience? That problem, despite many earnest 
 endeavors, has never been satisfactorily solved. 
 It is the great scandal of modern logic that 
 while every one is talking about the scientific 
 method, no one seems able to give a precise 
 answer to the question: What is the scientific 
 method? 
 
 To prove this and at the same time to eluci- 
 date my own theory, let us consider the now 
 most generally accepted exposition of the induc- 
 tive process. It is Mill's theory of the Five 
 Methods. Upon its very face this multipHcity 
 of methods suggests a suspicion of empirical 
 and unscientific explanation. But letting that 
 go, let us examine the first two of these meth- 
 ods, they being confessedly the fundamental 
 ones. 
 
 The Method of Agreement. This is but the 
 Tulgar method per enumerationem simplieem 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 345 
 
 with a very important proviso annexed. The 
 proviso is that the enumerated instances should 
 "have only one circumstance in common," But 
 that stultifies the whole exposition; for, it is 
 manifestly impossible when we observe many in- 
 stances of an effect or rather of similar effects, 
 to know that their antecedents agree in only one 
 particular. Mill's restriction upon the vulgar 
 method, guards against its abuses by making 
 the method impossible. 
 
 Does some one urge that only material cir- 
 cumstances ought to be considered, those hav- 
 ing some appreciably adequate power to pro- 
 duce the effect? But that would over-turn the 
 entire method, and substitute for it something 
 quite different and even contrary. The inquiry 
 would hinge, not upon the number of instances, 
 but upon the adequacy of the cause to produce 
 the effect. 
 
 Note, however, that our quarrel is not with' 
 the method of agreement in itself. Used wisely, 
 under the qualification just given, it leads in 
 many cases to a sufficient degree of certainty. 
 Our only objection is to the attempt to convert 
 it — by foisting upon it an impossible condition 
 — into one of the methods of scientific induc- 
 tion, which it is not. 
 
 Th^: Method of Diiference. Here we find 
 the same impossible condition annexed as in the 
 previous canon: there must be a "circumstance 
 
I 
 
 li '■ 
 
 346 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 in which alone the two instances differ." Let 
 us consider the only example given by Mill in 
 his exposition of the method: A man shot 
 through the heart, dies instantly. Undoubtedly 
 there is in this proof enough that in this partic- 
 ular case the death was caused by the wound. 
 But what warrants us, in converting that partic- 
 ular judgment into a universal one? What en- 
 ables us to infer that death is the invariable con- 
 sequent of gun-shot wounds in the heart? Be- 
 cause, Mill asserts, all other circumstances were 
 the same except the wound; "the man was m the 
 fullness of life immediately before." But that 
 we can never know except as more or less prob- 
 able. Men apparently in the fullness of life, of- 
 ten drop dead without any perceptible cause. 
 Even then in this extreme case, we must search 
 for some other warrant for a universal judgment 
 than that afforded by Mill's method. 
 • The true warrant evidently is in our previous 
 knowledge that such a wound is adequate in all 
 cases to produce death. The injury inflicted up- 
 on the most delicate part of the frail boddy 
 mechanism is so great that nothing could coun- 
 teract the result. But if the wound had been on 
 the finger, would we have framed a universal 
 judgment therefrom? Would we not have said 
 rather that death had been caused by fright^ 
 heart-failure or some other unknown cause? 
 And so in all cases, I think, the real warrant 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 347 
 
 for the induction is in a previous knowledge for 
 which Mill's canon makes no provision. 
 
 We dismiss then these famous Methods as 
 merely annexing an impossible condition to the 
 old empirical methods. And so we still have be- 
 fore us the problem of determining the essential 
 distinction between scientific and merely empir- 
 ical induction. 
 
 In the Philosophy of History the secret of the 
 scientific method was stated as being a process 
 of abstracting and accounting for the modifying 
 causes. Some fifty or sixty pages were devoted 
 to setting forth the historical evidence that all 
 the physical sciences have had their origin in a 
 developing comprehension of the complexity of 
 effects — in a continuous discovery of modifying 
 causes before unknown or disregarded. But we 
 have now reached a point of view where it is pos- 
 sible to go still deeper and make an important 
 addition to that statement. We can show pre- 
 cisely what it is that makes possible this scientific 
 analysis of the complexity of effects. This in- 
 most secret of the inductive method is its quanti- 
 tative conception of force. 
 
 The Conception of Force. The term force, as 
 commonly understood, is as vague as it is famil- 
 iar. It is used as a loose synonym for power, 
 efficiency or causality of any kind. But since 
 the discovery of the first two laws of motion, a 
 new scientific conception of force has gradually 
 
1 
 
 I- 
 
 ! ' 
 
 It 
 
 34S 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 developed which is as definite and exact as any 
 other mathematical term. These discoveries 
 made it possible to establish units of motion in- 
 variable in velocity and direction, and to analyzo 
 all actual motions, inconceivably complex and 
 changeful as they are, into mathematical sums of 
 such units, and the unit of force thus became 
 whatsoever cause was adequate to the production 
 of such a unit of motion. Thus the quantitative 
 conception of force arose— a symbol for caus- 
 ality conceived as absolutely invariable and ana- 
 lysable into a sum of exactly equivalent units. 
 ' Note, now, first, that only through such a 
 quantitative conception does the analysis of Na- 
 ture's complex and ever changing effects be- 
 come possible. The simplest calculations in 
 arithmetic would be impossible, if the units used 
 were variable. How much more impossible un- 
 der the same supposition would the Infinitesimal 
 Calculus become by which the astronomer anal- 
 yzes the earth^s motions, calculates the several 
 'influences of all the perceptible causes and sums 
 them all up in a result minutely accordant with 
 
 observation ! 
 
 Secondly, this conception of force makes it 
 possible to demonstrate the uniformity of causa- 
 tion. To see this it is only necessary to rightly 
 distinguish between effect and cause. The ob- 
 served effects are infinitely changeful; but in all 
 these changes each still remains the product of 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 349 
 
 some definite sum of unvarying, equivalent units 
 of force. 
 
 The Law of Physical Causation. See now how 
 fully our fundamental Law of Knowledge is here 
 vindicated. First, the cause is known only 
 through its effects. Consider that widest of all 
 scientific inductions — the doctrine of the conser- 
 vation of energy. But what is energy more than 
 an abstract expression for causality conceived as 
 acting with absolute invariability or mathemati- 
 cal uniformity? Beyond that there is no knowl- 
 edge of energy except through its results, to-wit, 
 the motions it produces. True, many physicists 
 like to think of energy or forces as immanent in 
 things; nor is there any objection to that consid- 
 ered as a mere mode of conceiving — an expedi- 
 ent for calculating directions, etc., and an aid to 
 the imagination. But there the true scientific 
 spirit stops. To insist that we have any real 
 knowledge of forces as little entities hidden in 
 things and passing out of them — that is to be 
 victimized by the fallacy of resemblance. 
 
 Secondly the effects are known only through 
 their causes. The simplest motion conceivable 
 is still a complex effect, dependent upon a mov- 
 ing thing, force, time and space; and how can 
 we know or even think of it independently of 
 these, its causal factors? Or take some more 
 complicated case, the infinitesimal variations of 
 acclerating motion, for instance; these defv even 
 
350 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 JUDGMENTS. 
 
 351 
 
 imagination ; the fact of their existence even was 
 first discovered only by abstract reasoning from 
 the thought of continuous forces. Or take the 
 still more wonderful changes of motion into 
 heat, color, etc. To humor the imagination we 
 speak of these as transformations; and yet it is 
 more than inconceivable, it is self-contradictory, 
 to speak of the formless as changing its form. 
 We know only that these abstractions are in 
 certain definite causal relations with motions. 
 So alwavs and everywhere, the only knowledge 
 of motion is a knowledge of that upon which 
 motion depends. 
 
 Deduction. Little need be added here to what 
 was said in the main treatise. The function of 
 the syllogism is simply to unite and apply to par- 
 ticular cases the truths obtained by induction. 
 Its art consists in remembering and using 
 knowledge already gained, and its rigidly me- 
 chanical operations are very much like those 
 whereby in animal sentiency a present sensation 
 is fused with past images. In fine, the exagger- 
 ated importance generally attached to the syllo- 
 gism is a striking proof of how entirely our 
 modern philosophy has been but a revamping of 
 the pre-scientific philosophy of Greece. 
 
 Note, however, that all long chains of reason- 
 ing naturally assume the syllogistic form; for, 
 the syllogism is the instrum-ent for combining 
 and applying inferences. The inferences thus 
 
 united, however, are essentially inductive. In 
 geometry, for instance, the main thing is to see 
 at each minute step of th^ reasoning that what is 
 true in the particular case presented in the dia- 
 gram, is universally true; and that is induction. 
 
SPACE. 
 
 353 
 
 III. 
 
 SPACE. 
 
 Confessedly, one of the most perplexing of all 
 philosophic problems is that of space. To this 
 problem I wish now to apply my fundamental 
 law of thought, that all thinking is a relating of 
 cause and effect, and that neither of these can be 
 known except in relation with the other. On 
 the one side we have some apprehension of in- 
 finite space; on the other, of the spatial proper- 
 ties of things, sucll as forms, distances, direc- 
 tions, etc. My thesis is that these two factors, 
 space and the spatial attributes of things are re- 
 laated to each other as causae and effect. Space 
 by itself is but a vague, elusive semi-thought 
 which can be truly known or even thought of 
 only through reference to the spatial attributes. 
 And conversely, the attributes can be known or 
 even thought only by relating them to that infin- 
 ite space upon which they depend. And, I fur- 
 ther hope to show that the obscurities and para- 
 doxes enveloping the spatial problem have come 
 from ignoring this fundamental law of thought. 
 
 Tlie Kantian Theory of Space. Let us consider 
 first the arguments by which this famous theory 
 IS supported by its author. 
 
 (i). Space, Kant first maintains is not derived 
 by abstraction from particular external experi- 
 ences; on the contrary the perception of objects 
 presupposes the idea of space '*as an intuition 
 a priori, before all experience." The argument 
 here is based upon a narrow and erroneous view 
 of abstraction. We have now discovered and 
 proved that in every abstracting act, the attri- 
 bute abstracted is shown as dependent not only 
 upon the thing or substance, but also upon other 
 causes. In the case of spatial attributes this 
 secondary ground of dependence is space. But 
 how, it may be asked, do we get the idea of 
 space? I answer that we do not get it apart as a 
 distinct, isolated idea, any more than we get the 
 isolated idea of the object or of the attribute. 
 Taken thus apart each is but the fragmentary 
 suggestion of an idea. What is a thing without 
 a form? Or a form without a thing? Or space 
 without spatial properties? But each becomes 
 intelligible- when united with the other in causal 
 
 relation. 
 
 Without this insight, Kant finds it impossible 
 to conceive of space except as a wholly magical 
 creation of the perceiving intelleqt. 
 
 (2). Kant's second argument is that the no- 
 tion of space is a necessary a priori idea, a pre- 
 
'/< 
 
 m 
 
 I) 
 
 ti! 
 
 :354 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 condition of the possibility of all phenomena. 
 As others have noted, this is nothing mre than 
 a new assertin of the thesis which the Critique 
 purports to prove. But it gives me the opportu- 
 nity for showing the exact point of failure in the 
 Kantian solution of the problem — not only of 
 space but of all thought. 
 
 That point of failure is that Kant made 
 knowledge to begin with a blind, unconscious 
 act. His necessary a priori ideas are mere as- 
 sumptions necessitated by *'our mental make- 
 irp" — compulsory, irresistible beliefs — aflFirma- 
 tions which the mind is somehow mysteriously 
 compelled to make without knowing any more 
 why it makes them than a stone knows why it 
 falls. And knowledge thus starting as a blind, 
 mechanically determined activity, never after- 
 ward gains any other character. In the end, it 
 confesses itself not to be genuine knowledge, 
 but nescience, mere "phenomenality." We read 
 again and again that Kant showed how knowl- 
 edge was possible; he showed rather how 
 knowledge was impossible. 
 
 And vet Kant was verv near the solution of 
 the great problem. In reducing to a system the 
 mongrel crowd of innate id-eas, necessary truths, 
 intuitions, etc., imagined by dermatic idealism, 
 and in genetically tracing them back to some 
 primary connection with the ideas of space and 
 .time, he was presenting the problem in so mas- 
 
 SPACE. 
 
 355 
 
 terly a shape as to make its solution seem not 
 very far away. And it was, I think, this sense 
 of a great problem almost solved, this expectancy 
 of a light about to break forth, which gave to 
 the Critique such a wonderfully fascinating pow- 
 er over human thought. Everybody, at least in 
 German V, thought himself competent to com- 
 plete the master's work. But his ''successors" 
 failed— almost comically. And they failed, I 
 think, because they did not have that full, deaf 
 view of the significance of the problem which 
 
 Kant had. 
 
 For the present I content myself with statmg 
 anew this problem. It is to discover some other 
 origin and basis of knowledge than mere as- 
 sumptions which all men, blindly, without knowl- 
 ing why, are compelled to believe just as all 
 stones are compelled to fall. But the Kantian 
 philosophy merely gives us a reason for not be- 
 lieving what— as it asserts in the same breath— 
 we are blindly compelled to believe. 
 
 (3). The third argument rests upon the 
 supposition that space is a whole divisible into 
 manv parts. But upon this argument we shall 
 not dwell, because we are to consider it later in 
 its more modern form as the theory of space 
 conceived as a sum of relations. Suffice it now 
 that the great German here falls a victim to the 
 fallacy of resemblance. He can conceive of 
 space only under ijie similitude of a divisible 
 
Ill 
 
 356 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 thing. But the very essence of space is to be in- 
 divisible, inseparable. Parts of space are pure fig- 
 ures of speech; and the only rational way in 
 which we can think of any spatial property of 
 things is simply as dependent upon space. 
 
 (4). Again space is infinite. But to know it 
 as thus actually existent, one would have to 
 count up, in Kant's opinion, the infinite number 
 of its parts. But that would be plainly impossi 
 ble in an ordinary life-time ; therefore our knowl- 
 edge of infinite space must be derived from some 
 a priori, congenital "form of our sensibility." 
 
 But there would be no need of so much count- 
 ing in order to discover that space is infinite, if 
 one would discard the fallacy of resemblance 
 and think only in terms of cause and effect. 
 Then he would see instantly that all limitation 
 of the extended depends upon and is made pos- 
 sible only by space. Whatsoever is thus limited, 
 must have space beyond it. Therefore, if space 
 is limited or finite it must have space beyond it ; 
 which is a contradiction in terpis. 
 
 (5). The Possibility of Mathematics. The four 
 arguments just given form the corner-stone of 
 Kant's system; and yet he has presented them 
 almost as cursorily as I have. But there is an- 
 other argument upon which his heart was plainly 
 set; especially in the Prolegomena he expa- 
 tiates upon it at great length and lovingly. The 
 argument is that only upon his hypothesis can 
 
 SPACE. 
 
 357 
 
 philosophic certainty be assured to mathematics. 
 And if there is no other way, it would perhaps 
 be well to give up the spatial world as a tran- 
 cendental illusion in order to save mathematics 
 and a part of morals. 
 
 But there is another way. It consists in re- 
 signing all hope of reaching real knowledge ex- 
 cept by thinking in terms of cause and effect. 
 Confining ourselves to the question of space, let 
 us remember that the geometer demands only to 
 be assured of the exact uniformity or unchange- 
 ableness of space. What is geometrically proved 
 true here must be true — not, as Mill thinks, in a 
 "a reasonable degree of adjacent cases" — but 
 true everywhere even to infinitude. Nowhere 
 must there be the most infinitesimal lapse in the 
 immovability of space. 
 
 How, then, is this assurance of spatial con- 
 tinuity gained? I answer that it is implicit in 
 all perceptions of moving things. Motion is a 
 complex effect, dependent upon and inseparable 
 from some moving thing, but also dependent 
 upon the absolute fixedness of points in space. 
 If there were no such unalterableness of the spa- 
 tial points, motion would lack all determination 
 of direction or velocity and therefore could nev- 
 er be known. 
 
 The fact just stated may be illustrated by means 
 of a queer conclusion reached by Mr. Spencer, 
 the great nineteenth century phophet of 'The 
 
358 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 Unknowable." He instances at great length the 
 case of a man walking on a ship which is sailing 
 in the opposite direction upon a sea which as 
 part of the earth is being carried in still another 
 direction, with several other complications. And 
 he concludes therefrom that **our ideas of mo- 
 tion are illusive:" that even motion is unknow- 
 able. One might as well affirm that algebra was 
 an unknowable, self-contradictory science be- 
 cause it insisted upon adding together plus and 
 minus quantities. For the case given is merely 
 that of a sum of motions which partially cancel 
 each other. And the ultimate motion obtained 
 by adding these plus and minus quantities would 
 plainly be altogether unknowable and also im- 
 possible, if there were no fixed points in 
 space, (i) J 
 
 There is then no need of affirming the subjec- 
 tivitv of space in order to make mathematics 
 possible. Thus the only argument upon which 
 Kant seems really to have relied is obliterated. 
 
 It may likewise be added that there is no need 
 of any other a priori machinery of innate ideas 
 or intuitions to assure us that continuous, im- 
 movable space exists. That assurance is given 
 by the logical process of abstraction— that es- 
 sence of all reasoning— which proves to us that 
 
 SPACE. 
 
 351». 
 
 (1) Spencer. First Pi^nciples. 
 
 every perceptible motion is an abstract from and 
 dependent upon space. 
 
 There is, then, no good reason for accepting 
 the Kantian supposition. But, it may still be 
 urged, is there not at least a bare possibility of 
 its being true? If not probable, is it not at least 
 possible that space is but a product of our sub- 
 jectivity? I answer: No! But the full demon- 
 stration thereof must be reserved to the next sec- 
 tion, where we treat of perception. For the 
 present let the following suffice. 
 
 Kant undeniably made a great advance upon 
 the skepticism of Hume, when he showed that 
 all the objects of thought or the understanding — 
 Space, Time, the World, Substance, Cause, etc., 
 — were so closely interrelated that to deny one 
 was to deny all. But he did not take the final 
 step. He did not see that thought itself was so 
 peculiarly interrelated with the objects of thought 
 that to cancel them was to render all thinking 
 impossible. This insight would have saved him 
 from that pit of "subjectivity" from which he 
 was always evidently striving to escape, but in 
 vain. 
 
 The Argument from Interaction.. But in addi- 
 tion to these Kantian arguments there are two 
 others of a more showy, superficial kind, and 
 therefore more current in recent philosophy. 
 Both of them, as I hope to show, are products 
 
 L*ll'il 
 
360 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 of the fallacy of resemblance — that deep-rooted 
 tendency of the human animal to think only in 
 figures of speech. One of these arguments 
 springs from the attempt to picture space in the 
 likeness of things considered as interacting; the 
 other, in the likeness of a thing as made up of a 
 whole and its parts. Let us first examine the 
 argument from interaction. 
 
 Let me present this argument in the words of 
 an American idealist noted for keenness and 
 vigor of thought: ''Unless we endow space with 
 activity and regard it as a peculiar something in 
 interaction with other things the affirmation of 
 its existence becomes absurd; and its existence 
 would in no way be distinguishable from its 
 non-existence." (i). 
 
 Such is the argument from interaction. How 
 childish it seems! For, first, what is interaction 
 but the production of motion.. But motion has 
 no meaning except as change of position in 
 space. And so the argument reduces itself to 
 this: Space does not exist because it does not 
 change position in space. 
 
 Secondly. We are told that because space 
 does not interact, its existence would be indis- 
 tinguishable from its non-existence ; space there- 
 fore is merely phenomenal. But in another place, 
 the author argues that things likewise cannot in- 
 
 SPACE. 
 
 961 
 
 (1) Bowne. Metaphysia 129. 
 
 teract, and therefore they are merely phenom- 
 enal. This is the chief weapon of "critical" ideal- 
 ism — a preposterous hatchet with which it splits 
 sensible reality into impossible parts and then 
 easily shows that each of the dissevered parts is 
 a ghostly illusion. It is of course impossible that 
 either space or spatial properties or things 
 should be perceptible apart from each other. 
 
 Thirdly. This argument from interaction 
 shows upon its very face its descent from the fal- 
 lacy of resemblance. Space in order to exist 
 must be like things, must move and be moved; 
 and because it is not thus like things, it does not 
 exist. Such is the pictorial philosophy. 
 
 Space as a Sum of Relations. This argument 
 has the same origin as the one just considered 
 concerning interaction. Space is pictorially rep- 
 resented as an infinite thing divisible into an in- 
 finite number of parts. And as innumerable ab- 
 surdities must inevitably result from such a fan- 
 cy as that, space is once more dismissed as mere- 
 ly subjective, existing only "in and for the 
 mind." Even the cool-headed Kant was led 
 astray at this point and painfully pointed out 
 that it would take too much time to count, all 
 this infinite number of parts and that therefore 
 space must be an a priori form of intuition. 
 
 The persistent error in all such argumenta- 
 tions is the false assumption of the divisibility of 
 
362 THE PHILOSOiPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 space. Space may be mentally analyzed, but it 
 cannot be actually divided. Every one will see 
 the moment he begins to reflect that the very es- 
 sence of space is its absolute continuity. Bisect 
 it and there is still space between the parts. In 
 fact the very idea of division or separation in- 
 volves that of space between the parts separated; 
 for, if there were no space between, there would 
 be no separation. Space may be analyzed; we 
 can measure it by means of things used as units 
 of measurement; we may imagine the space 
 within a room as separated from that outside. 
 But in all these operations space is mentally an- 
 alyzed, not actually divided. 
 
 But that, it will be urged, is but a trivial dis- 
 tinction, a mere truism. And so it would be in 
 the light of the old philosophy, which sees in 
 mental analysis nothing more than a mental as 
 distinguished from a physical operation. But 
 we have now passed far beyond that naive view. 
 We have gained a new insight into the deep 
 meaning and universal scope of abstraction. 
 We see that abstraction does not consist mere- 
 ly in mentally dividing or separating the attri- 
 bute from its object but that it instantaneously 
 puts them together again — unites them in causal 
 relation to each other. In Hue, to abstract is to re- 
 late. 
 
 To merely divide mentally leaves the divided 
 halves as urrelated as the halves of a split log 
 
 SPACE. 
 
 363 
 
 are physically. And to that process the old phi- 
 losohpy has practically confined itself, in its view 
 of abstraction. Let us apply this insight to the 
 chief idealistic arguments concerning space re- 
 lations. 
 
 (i). Spatial relations, it is said, have no inde- 
 pendent existence of their own; therefore, they 
 must exist only in and for thought, and so like- 
 wise must space, which is but their sum. 
 
 Non-scqiiitur. The premise is undeniable: the 
 spatial form, for instance, which we abstract 
 from any given thing has no independent exist- 
 ence. The form without the thing is indeed 
 nothintg. But likew^ise the thing without a form 
 is nothing. Abstraction, however, does not con- 
 sist in splitting a thing asunder into two noth- 
 ings. It is an analysis of the thinig into two fac- 
 tors conjoined with an instantaneous synthesis 
 of these two as cause and effect. The abstract 
 and the object abstracted from still exist indis- 
 solubly together and with the same common 
 right to existence. If the thing is real, the 
 form is real; and if the form is not real, the thing 
 
 is not real.. 
 
 Or to put it into a still simpler form, the whole 
 idealistic argument reduces itself to this: Be- 
 cause an effect does not exist independently of 
 its cause, therefore it does not exist at all. Such 
 reasoning would lay waste the whole universe 
 of thought. 
 
' i 
 
 364 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 (2). Another argument is, that the spatial re- 
 lations of things are perpetually changing and 
 therefore space, as the sum of these is perpetual- 
 ly becoming something else. The answer is that 
 space is not a piece of patch-work made of an 
 infinite number of parts. We must discard all 
 such foolish imagery and look upon space scien- 
 tifically as that upon which the infinite host of 
 spatial abstractions, forms, places, etc., depend. 
 And then, surely, it will be evident that a cause 
 may remain eternally the same while its effects 
 are incessantly changing because they are also 
 dependent upon other conditions which are in- 
 cessantly changing. 
 
 (3). Beside the actual, there are countless 
 myriads of ideal and possible space-relations 
 which things might have; these evidently are 
 subjective, therefore so must space be, since it 
 is but the source of them. But how utterly 
 childish this appears when we no longer regard 
 space as a sum of parts, but as that upon which 
 all space properties depend! For, surely, it does 
 not detract from the reality of a cause that there 
 are ' 'myriads of ideal and possible" effects 
 which it might produce under different condi- 
 tions. 
 
 The Independence of Space. Another argu- 
 ment of Maya idealism is that the reality of 
 space would involve a dualism of first principles 
 
 SPACE. 
 
 365 
 
 —two independent and infinite existences. But 
 what compels us to beliieve that space is abso- 
 lutely independent? Nothing but the tacit as- 
 sumption — pervading all idealism — that whatev- 
 er is dependent, is not real. But that assump- 
 tion is not merely baseless, it is absurd. For if 
 the dependent, the effects do not exist, then 
 causes do not exist. 
 
X 
 
 TIME. 
 
 367 
 
 IV. 
 
 TIME. 
 
 Much of what has just been> said concerning 
 space appHes to time, and therefore need not be 
 repeated in this brief survey. I note here only 
 a few neglected facts which put a new light upon 
 the theory of Time. 
 
 The Pictorial Process. Nineteenth century 
 metaphysics exhibits, even more clearly in its 
 discussions about time than elsewhere, the won- 
 derful vigor of the Fallacy of Resemblance even 
 under conditions that would seem to render 
 it impossible. Space readily lends itself to the 
 uses of the imagination; nothing is easier than 
 to think of space pictorially, as an airy sort of a 
 thing capable of being divided into parts and re- 
 united into a whole just like any other thing. 
 But the surprising peculiarity of Time is that it 
 
 absolutely refuses to submit to this picturing 
 process. There are no possible images of it that 
 
 do not manifestly contradict all its properties. 
 
 But despite this impossibility, imagination 
 does manage to find some semblance of things 
 
 wherewith to picture time. How? Simply by 
 borrowing, so to speak, second-hand images of 
 space and absurdly trasferring them to time. 
 This attempt to understand time by means of 
 spatial images leads to queer results. For in- 
 stance, we often try to think of time as like a 
 moving thing; it flows like a stream, etc. But 
 time cannot move any more than it can stand 
 on its head; present time is not "before" us for 
 an instant, and it does not suddenly dart behmd 
 us to become past time. Or, seeing the folly of 
 this we change the figure and think of time as 
 stationary, as a straight line divisible into parts. 
 Tliis seems better as being more abstract; but 
 proves to be really more self-con;tradictory and 
 delusive. For the 'parts of a straight line all co- 
 exist. But time is of such a nature that only the 
 present instant exists; the past has become ex- 
 tinct and the future does not yet exist. 
 
 The quibbles and contradictions resultant 
 from this pictorial view are too familiar to need 
 rehearsal here. But note now the use that mod- 
 ern idealists have made of these puzzles. Seemg 
 the contradictions and absurdities resulting from 
 the attempt to find out what time ''looks like," 
 do they abandon such attempts? Do they sim- 
 ply draw the rational inference that time is oi 
 such a nature to preclude all picturing of it? 
 No! on the contrary, they proudly present these 
 
N 
 
 368 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 riddles as a demonstration that time does not 
 really exist. 
 
 Time and Temporal Periods. But let us dis- 
 card all these puerilities. Instead of trying to 
 imagine what time looks like, let us interpret it 
 simply in terms of cause and effect. We have, 
 then, temporal periods — days, hours, instants, 
 etc. — each presented in our conscious experi- 
 ence as a complex effect. Each is dependent 
 partly upon our ever changing experience and 
 partly upon the continuity and oneness of time. 
 To the latter is due the absolute irreversiblenesss 
 of these periods; to the former is due their par- 
 ticularity, their capacity for being analyzed — the 
 days into hours, the hours into moments, etc. — 
 in fine, the possibility of their being measured 
 and recognized by thought. 
 
 Let us apply this insight now to that chief 
 difficulty, that most formidable problem in the 
 metaphysics of time over which philosophy was 
 vexing its brains as hopelessly two thousand 
 years ago as during the last century. Every 
 thinker knows the problem by heart: the non- 
 existence of the past and the future, the present 
 a merely subjective boundary line no more real- 
 ly existing than the equator. But from our 
 present point of view the problem is readily 
 solved. Temporal periods are analyzable into 
 past, present and future; for, they are abstracted 
 
 TIME. 
 
 369 
 
 from, partially dependent upon and always 
 measurable by the motions of things. But the 
 time upon which these temporal periods also de- 
 pend is indivisible. It is not a thing, a com- 
 pound, a whole constructed out of its parts. On 
 \he contrary, it is, even more evidently than in 
 the cognate case of space— absolutely one, con- 
 tinuous, indivisible. We may indeed properiy in 
 familiar speech, speak of time past, present or 
 future, as we speak of the ''rising" and the "set- 
 ting" of the sun. But none the less, time is 
 indivisible, contmuous, without gaps, atomic 
 structure or other semblance of a thing. 
 
 The problem of time, then, is simply dust, 
 which philosophy has thrown into its own eyes 
 by its attempts to imagine what time looks like. 
 The obscuration disappears when we think ra- 
 tionally— not metaphorically— of time as that 
 upon which temporal periods depend. 
 
 Time and Interaction. But perhaps the old 
 cavil will still be urged. Time does not interact 
 with things. It is merely a condition, not the 
 real and ''efficient" cause of their motions. But 
 what does science claim to know about this mys- 
 tic ''influence," this "dynamic efficiency" sup- 
 posed to pass from body to body and to thus 
 produce their motions? Absolutely nothing ex- 
 cept the persistence of its quantity through all 
 apparent transformation. And this persistence is 
 
370 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 determined solely by the invariable conditions of 
 Space and Time. So that space and time seem 
 to be the ultimate conditions upon which mov- 
 ing things depend not merely for a place and 
 time to move in, but also for all we really know 
 about those mystic influences which are alleged 
 to be their only true and efficient causes. 
 
 
 V. 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 Compulsory Beliefs. Let it be fully understood 
 at the out-set that we shall make no appeal to 
 any merely alleged irresistibleness of belief. 
 Reason, as I have said elsewhere, is too divine to 
 be compelled; it will listen only to reasons. In 
 fact, an irresistible belief in this sense— a behef 
 which we are mysteriously compelled to accept 
 by something inherent in our mental structure 
 or constitution— is an impossibility. The very 
 fact that this belief is unaccountably forced upon 
 us, excites the suspicion of its being merely sub- 
 jective We doubt it because we are thus com- 
 pelled to believe it. Kant taught this to the 
 world, although the teacher seemed sometimes 
 hardly conscious of what he was teachmg. 
 
 Hence thet Scottish philosophy, with its lavish 
 appeals to common-sense, irresistible beliefs, etc., 
 failed utterly to find any real guarantee for ob- 
 jective existence. There is a vein of almost 
 whimsical irrationality running through it. What 
 
;fff* 
 
 372 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 could be worse, for instance, than its plea that 
 perception was •'immediate," despite the im- 
 mense and complicated mass of mediation which 
 so evidently intervenes between the object per- 
 ceived and the perceiving intellect. No wonder 
 that Sir Wm. Hamilton was driven to the strange 
 device of imagining the soul as somehow seated 
 in both eyes and there inspecting the pictures 
 painted upon the two retinas. 
 
 Discarding, then, all appeals to intuition, irre- 
 sistible beliefs, etc., the question of reality nar- 
 rows itself to this: How do we know that an 
 outer, spatial world exists? My ultimate answer 
 to this question will prove to be a very simple 
 one. But before its full force can be appreciated, 
 It is necessary to exhibit the sources of the con-* 
 fusion and perplexity which have so long en- 
 veloped this theme. 
 
 The Fallacy of Resemblance. That a thought 
 should resemble a thing is an evident absurdity, 
 an utter impossibility; And yet there is hardly 
 any proposition which has come much nearer to 
 being accepted by all philosophers as a ''univer- 
 sal and necessary truth'^ than the proposition that 
 our ideas of things must be like their objects. 
 Especially has modern philosophy made constant 
 use of this preposterous proposition as the enter- 
 ing wedge of skepticism. Locke began the work 
 by discovering that our ideas of secondary quali- 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 373 
 
 ties could not be resemblances of what really ex- 
 ists in bodies, although primary qualities possi- 
 bly might be. Berkeley developed this hint into 
 his celebrated idealism. He shows that ihe 
 primary qualitites are in the same plight as the 
 secondary ones; points out the contradictions in- 
 volved "in supposing things like unto our ideas 
 existing without;" and concludes therefrom that 
 corporeal substances do not exist. Hume argues 
 in the same strain. Kant carefully points out as 
 the inmost distinction of his philosophy that he 
 does not regard the space idea as quite ''similar 
 to the object," any more than he believes that 
 "the sensation of red has a similarity to the prop- 
 erty of vermilion which in one excites this sen- 
 sation." (i) And so with Spencer, in fact with 
 all idealistic or agnostic writers — never have I 
 found one who did not sooner or later disclose 
 the true basis of his skepticism as lying in the 
 impossibility of ever finding out whether our per- 
 ceptions really resemble the things perceived. 
 
 But we have now passed far beyond that ab- 
 original point of view. We see that there is not 
 the slightest need that a thought should be like 
 the object which it makes known to us. Think- 
 ing is not some mystic process of interior pho- 
 tography. A thought is a means, an instrumental 
 condition for the disclosure of an object. But it 
 
 (1) Kant. ProUoomfna. 13. Remark II. 
 
i 
 
 pip™ 
 
 II 
 
 374 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 is no more requisite that a thought in order to 
 perform its functions, should be Hke the object 
 than that an axe should be like the log which it 
 splits or that a toothache should resemble the 
 tooth that causes it. 
 
 Up to this point I have presented but a merely 
 negative aspect of the theory of perception. A 
 perception, whatever it may or may not be, is 
 certainly not a picture. And if the reader fully 
 grasps even this purely negative view, he will be 
 surprised to find how much of the bewilderment 
 and contradiction of current epistemology is es- 
 caped. 
 
 But something more than this merely negative 
 view must, of course, be given. Otherwise we 
 should seem to be accusing the great thinkers of 
 the race of utter imbecility in having thus insist- 
 ed upon what was self-evidently impossible and 
 absurd— viz., that thoughts should resemble their 
 objects But this insistence was due not to 
 pure folly, but to a logical demand for some in- 
 sight into the method of knowledge. How, it 
 was asked, can a thought give us any valid 
 knowledge of a thing, if the one does not corre- 
 spond to or somehow resemble the other? But 
 evidently the required correspondence or resem- 
 blance between the idea and its object could be 
 secured only by stripping the object of every spa- 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 375 
 
 tial quality — that is, of all that was essentially 
 characteristic of things. Hence, idealism. 
 
 A False Viciv of Abstraction. For a typical ex- 
 ample of this let us take the teachings of Berke- 
 ley. Impartial readers can hardly help being 
 puzzled by that author's serene and confident as- 
 surance that things are only "ideas." That to 
 Berkeley seems to be an axiom, self-evident, in- 
 disputable. And if his axiom be conceded the 
 rest of his philosophy naturally becomes very 
 easy. Things being only ideas, of course they do 
 not exist independently of the mind. The es- 
 sence of being is to be perceived ; the world does 
 not exist when no one is looking at it. Even 
 "the vulgar" understand by reality nothing but 
 a regular succession of ideas in their minds. And 
 so on and on, until th'e mystified reader begins to 
 suspect some malformation either in Berkeley's 
 brain or his own. 
 
 But the trouble is not so serious as that. Berk- 
 eley is simply the victim of a defective and de- 
 lusive view of abstraction. To see that it is 
 necesary to clearly understand what an abstrac- 
 tion is. 
 
 To abstract, as we have seen, in the section 
 upon judgment, is to relate a cause and an effect. 
 The object and its attribute are not split apart 
 as with a hatchet ; the one is not even subtracted 
 from the other. But there is an analysis con- 
 
376 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 377 
 
 joined with a new synthesis; the attribute — mo- 
 tion, for instance— has b^en abstracted from and 
 yet is never to be considered as really separate 
 from or independent of its object. There is also 
 a second essential characteristic of an abstrac- 
 tion, its complexity; it is dependent not only up- 
 on the object from which it has been abstracted, 
 but also upon other causes external to the object; 
 it is indeed this secondary dependence which 
 gives to the abstraction that wonderful wealth of 
 meaning and power whereby it becomes the 
 means of binding things with things in that vast 
 network of causal relations revealed by science. 
 But to avoid confusion, let us provisionally ig- 
 nore this secondary dependence. Let us fix our 
 attention upon its primary indefeasible depen- 
 dence upon the object abstracted from. That at 
 least is indisputable. Any attempt to think of 
 motion or any other abstract as having a really 
 independent existence of its own, would i)e a sure 
 sign of insanity. 
 
 Now Berkeley, and idealists in general, do not 
 indeed deny this dependence; that would be ab- 
 surd. But they burrow und^r the fact and un- 
 dermine it. They think of these abstracts — attri- 
 butes, motions, qualities — as somehow having a 
 vague, independent existence of their own; the 
 object abstracted from is to them nothing but the 
 sum of these airy abstractions. Thinking thus, it 
 
 is but a short step to the idealistic conclusion. 
 These abstractions detached from all reality, 
 floating in the void, elusive and evanescent — 
 what more natural than to regard them as merely 
 "ideas?" For do not "ideas" have the same 
 ghostly and ephemeral nature? 
 
 Thus Berkeley and all other idealists — misled 
 by a defective view which misses the most essen- 
 tial characteristic of the abstracting process- 
 find it easy, even necessary, to believe that things 
 are only "ideas." They are the victims of a 
 mental mirage which presents only abstractions, 
 hanging in mid-air, unsupported and turned up- 
 side down. 
 
 Substance arid Attribute. Of similar origin are 
 the follies that have gathered around the con- 
 ception of substance and attribute. What can be 
 more grotesque than the idea of attributes "in- 
 hering" or sticking in a substance like pins in a 
 pin-cushion? Or of the substance as a mysteri- 
 ous, imperceptible substrate hidden beneath the 
 attributes? How determined, too, each term in 
 this strange relation seems to be to annihilate its 
 correlate; the substance, we are told, is but the 
 sum of its attributes; and the attributes are but 
 mere abstractions. 
 
 But if we interpret the two correlates, not in 
 ligures of speech, but in terms of cause and ef- 
 fect, ihe perplexity disappears. When we ab- 
 
 
< ikil: i 
 
 ^1 
 
 378 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 379 
 
 stract an attribute from an object we do not di- 
 vide them from each other or spHt them apart. 
 On the contrary we bring them together, we re- 
 late them as cause and effect. Even if 'we ab- 
 si- acted a thousand attributes from a given sub- 
 stance, the substance would remain unimpaired 
 and undinilnished, and the attributes lose noth- 
 nig of their reality in the process of being ab- 
 stracted. In fine, the relation of substance and 
 accident is the complete vindication of our funda- 
 mental law of knowledge; neither cause nor ef- 
 fect can be known or even thought dissevered 
 from its correlate. A substance without attri- 
 butes would indeed be a deep mvstery. And an 
 attribute without a substance would be a still 
 deeper one. But unite the two in causal relation 
 and each instantly illumines the other. 
 
 Composite Pictures. Some thinkers have found 
 in a recent photographic invention a new means 
 of explaining and making plausible the ancient 
 theory of abstraction as onlv a picturing of re- 
 semblances. General ideas, it is aserted, are pro- 
 duced in some such way as that in which a pho- 
 tographer produces a "composite picture '' Im- 
 ages of different individuals are mechanically 
 blended or fused; their differences are obliterat- 
 ed, a common type appears. 
 
 But these pictorial philosophers seem to entire- 
 ly overlook the fact that composite pictures are 
 
 impossible except when the resemblance is very 
 great and the differences almost indiscernible. 
 Portraits vary but slightly in their outlines, and 
 hence are readily fused into a common likeness. 
 But who would attempt a composite picture of all 
 triangles or of all motions? Or of all animals or 
 plants? Or even of the arithmetical digits? Mo! 
 the formation of general ideas does not consist 
 in the mere effacement of differences. Every at- 
 tempt to explain abstraction as solely a tracing 
 of resemblances must end in the confusion and 
 perplexity so characteristic of our modern phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 The Complexity of Effects. Another superabun- 
 dant source of idealistic error is the neglect of 
 the scientific common-place that effects are com- 
 plex. Discerning that the object perceived is not 
 sufficient by itself to produce the effect, the ideal- 
 ist gravely announces that it is not necessary at 
 all for the production of the effect and does not 
 Because colors, for instance, are dependent not 
 exist! The effect is merely a mental creation, 
 solely upon colored objects, but also upon aether 
 waves, nerve motions, cerebral centres, etc. 
 therefore colored objects are needless. Because 
 the effect is consummated by the abstracting 
 mind, therefore it is independent of everything 
 else. 
 
 I shall waste no time upon argumentation of 
 
380 
 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 that type. Let us rather note that insight into 
 the complexity of effects dispells that appear- 
 ance of deceptiveness in perception which has al- 
 ways been the real stronghold of skepticism. 
 The stationary appears to move, for instance, if 
 we fail to take in account that essential factor' in 
 all observation, the position of the spectator. 
 The very large appears very small, if we fail to 
 take mto account that essential factor in all per- 
 ception of magnitudes, the intervening distance 
 And so everywhere scientific insight into the 
 complexity of effects vindicates the truthfulness 
 and exactitude of perception instead of reducing 
 It to such a process of "phenomenality" and illu- 
 sion, as idealism imagines. 
 
 The Kantian Doctrine of Phenomenality. This 
 doctrine is the elaborate systematization of what 
 has always been a favorite conception of minds 
 of a mystical cast. It conceives of the world as 
 a dream which all men are somehow mysterious- 
 ly compelled to dream throughout their earthly 
 Jives. Here, again, the fallacy of resem- 
 blance is evidently at work; it is an at- 
 tempt to explain reality by likening it to 
 a dream, a hallucination or some other 
 product of involuntary imagination. But what I 
 wish to show is that this Kantian doctrine of 
 phenomenality, plausible as it may seem to the 
 thoughtless, is absolutely inconceivable. It is 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 381 
 
 devoid of something without which even dreams 
 would be impossible. It lacks an element of san- 
 ity which is inseparable even from a madman's 
 ravings. 
 
 For, let it be noted that Kant's doctrine of 
 "phenomenality" makes not the least provision 
 for any genuine causation. No more than 
 Hume, can he find any real bond of connection 
 between either things or ideas. There is nothing 
 more than a subjective necessity of imagining 
 causal relations which, instead of guaranteeing 
 discredits their reality. Note further this fact 
 which, so far as known to me, has been hitherto- 
 fore overlooked: Sense, understanding, reason 
 in Kant's view of them, sink far below the level 
 of the imagination in its craziest moods. No 
 matter how monstrous may be the illusions pre- 
 sented to the dreamer or the madman, yet tha 
 bond of causal connexion between them is, real; 
 they do not come at random; they unfold one 
 from another with as rigid a continuity as do the 
 movements of the stars. But in the Kantian 
 world of phenomenality nothing is real. The in- 
 terdependence of the phenomena is just as illu- 
 sive as the phenomena themselves. Causation is 
 merely a subjective necessity — a dream about 
 dreatns. Order and invariableness are equally 
 illusive, since both Space and Time are non-ex- 
 istent. In fine, each phenomena, each evanes- 
 
 \^. 
 
882 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 cent idea, is absolutely isolated, comes really at 
 random, is really without any connection with 
 the rest. Compared with this the madman's 
 world is a cosmos. 
 
 Let then the idealist think intently upon this 
 unassailable distinction. Let him cease to prattle 
 about ''fixed order," "invariable succession," etc., 
 after he has by his hypothesis converted such 
 words into symbols of mere delusion and un- 
 reality. Then he cannot but see instantly that 
 phenomena in his sense of the term are abso- 
 lutely unknowable. They have not even that de- 
 gree of intelligibility which attaches to the products 
 of the imagination. 
 
 Nor can the idealist escape by throwing Kant 
 overboard like another Jonah. None of Kant's 
 successors have made any better provision for 
 the order and interdependence of phenomena 
 than he did. In Hegel especially, causation was 
 but a provisional, inadequate, "self-annulling" 
 phase of thought— to be left behind as the notion 
 moved on toward the Idea. That, indeed, is the 
 fatal error of all Post-Kantian idealism. As has 
 been abundantly shown in the Philosophy of 
 History, the essence and life of the idealistic im- 
 pulse is its emphasis upon causality. The dogma 
 of "Maya" or "transcendenal illusion" is but an 
 accident, a disease to which idealism is peculiarly 
 susceptible. Post-Kantian idealism has flung 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 383 
 
 away the essence, the life, but kept the accident, 
 the disease. 
 
 Finally, the dogma of "phenomenality" renders 
 all real knowledge impossible by destroying the 
 distinction between truth and falsehood. Its 
 teaching is that an enormously successful lie is a 
 kind of truth, and the only kind of truth of which 
 we have any genuine knowledge. But that is high 
 treason against good morals as well as reason. 
 It puts all human knowledge of existence upon 
 a lower level than the hallucinations of the mad- 
 man. For, first, it exploits the former as being a 
 more universal, gigantic and irresistible impos- 
 ture than the latter; secondly, it denies to our 
 human world-view that element of truthfulness 
 which is to be found, as we have shown in the 
 preceding paragraph, even in the ravings of the 
 insane. 
 
 The Demand for Unity. The more one exam- 
 ines the grounds on which the doctrine of the 
 world's ideality rests, the more he is surprised at 
 their inadequacy and airiness. Hence we in- 
 stinctively feel that there must be some weightier 
 reason for this long persistence of a paradox that 
 seems to hang upon such a brittle thread of ar- 
 gument. There have been, perhaps, several such 
 reasons, but chief among them is the demand for 
 unity. The human mind demanded that even in 
 the pre-scientific age; and now more than ever. 
 
S84 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 88b 
 
 ' ttii t 
 
 But philosophy has sought this unity by a wrong 
 method—through the fallacy of resemblance, by 
 ignoring the differences and magnifying the like- 
 ness of the objects. Thus comes materialism cry- 
 iny thoughts are but pale copies of things; and 
 also idealism crying that things are but ^'exter- 
 nalized" pictures of thoughts. But instead of 
 umty we get thus only endless contention over 
 what is really little more than a question of nom- 
 enclature. 
 
 The only true unity is the unity of dependence. 
 Objects the most diverse—even things and 
 thoughts— may be related as cause and effect • in 
 fact, ihey are thus being related in every moment 
 Of genuine thinking. There is no need of pain- 
 fully paring down either of these contrasted ele- 
 ments into a delusive similitude of the other. 
 There is need of gradually disentangling, by a 
 strict scientific method, the immense complex of 
 causal relations until we reach that Ultimate 
 Unity on which all else depends. This is the 
 -only sane monism. 
 
 The Ultimate Doubt. We have thus examined 
 —in this section and the two preceding ones up- 
 on Space and Time— the arguments for modem 
 or agnostic idealism, and traced them all back to 
 t few primary errors into which the human intel- 
 lect seems very prone to fall. So far as positive 
 arguments are concerned, agnostic idealism 
 
 seems to have no standing-ground; any positive 
 proof or even indication of the world's "phenom- 
 enality" appears to be lacking. 
 
 But there still remains a negative argument, 
 venerable and formidable. Must not all our 
 knowledge, it will be asked, ultimately rest upon 
 some unverifiable assumption? And does not 
 every asumption carr>' with it some suggestion, 
 some probability of its deceptiveness even 
 though there may be no proof or even indication 
 thereof? And does not this ultimate dubiety at- 
 tach itself especially to the senses? May not per- 
 ception after all prove to be merely a universal 
 dream? Could not Infinite Power produce our 
 sensations, each in its order, without the inter- 
 vention of a spatial world and organs of sense? 
 
 I begin my answer to these questions by point- 
 ing out that no real knowledge is based or can 
 be based solely upon an unverifiable assumption. 
 And under that term must be included all such 
 nondescript phrases as ''self-evident truths," "in- 
 tutions," irresistible beliefs, etc.; for, they differ 
 only in name; no new certainty is gained by the 
 easy process of declaring a given proposition to 
 be "self-evident." No real knowledge, then, 
 can be based upon an assumption. This 
 wide prevalence of a contrary opinion is but 
 a survival from a pre-scientific age, when induc- 
 tion was misunderstood and when reasoning 
 
 i( 
 
rt 
 
 386 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 387 
 
 .4 
 
 meant only a deducing of some proposition from 
 a more universal one, and that from a still wider 
 one, and so on up to "self-evident truths," or un- 
 verifiable asumptions. But we now know that 
 knowledge begins with inductions; and that the 
 starting-point of an induction is not an assump- 
 tion. 
 
 Precisely in this inductive way we began. The 
 proposition that all thinking was a relating of 
 cause and effect was set forth as something to 
 be proved by an inductive examination of the 
 various processes of thought. And we have 
 found that every form of mental activity — per- 
 ceiving, abstracting, conceiving, judging, the 
 simplest inference, the most universal of scien- 
 tific inductions, the recognition of Space and 
 Time — has for its essence the establishment of 
 some causal relation. Eliminate the causal ele- 
 ment from any act of thinking and it loses forth- 
 with all its meaning, its life. Thus a wonderful 
 interrelation, a common kinship, is proved to ex- 
 i§t between all activities of thought. All, from 
 the simplest and most rudimentary to the high- 
 est and most complex, are found to be but more 
 or less developed forms of a single process. 
 
 Through this inductively established principle 
 we hope to give a final answer to the question 
 above presented. In other words, it is this soli- 
 darity of thought which renders doubt concern- 
 
 ing the reality of the spatial world logically im- 
 posible. Let us see. 
 
 The Final Argument. My thesis is this. 
 Thought is so interrelated that the negation of the 
 spatial world logieally involves the negation — the 
 eollapse and extinetion of all thinking. The dem- 
 onstration thus becomes that known to all 
 mathematicians as the reductio ad absurdum. 
 There is a difference, indeed, but one that 
 serves only to give a greater potency and 
 sweep to our argument. The geometer shows 
 that the negation of his theorem leads to the 
 overthrow of some accepted principle of thought. 
 Here it is to be shown that the negation of the 
 spatial world logically leads to the overthrow not 
 merely of some particular principle, but of all 
 principles of thought — to the collapse of all 
 thinking. 
 
 (i). To begin my argument, the first fact to 
 be proved is that we have no knowledge of any 
 particular perception apart from our knowledge 
 of the object perceived. Of course, the average 
 psychologist will wave this affirmation aside with 
 a derisive smile. He has always been in the 
 habit of claiming the most transparent knowl- 
 edge of his thoughts apart from everything else. 
 All his teachers and books have been quite unan- 
 imous upon that point. Concerning his knowl- 
 edge of external existence he is modest enough; 
 
 
38S 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 389 
 
 :'1 . 
 
 but for him no other spot was ever so brightly 
 illumined as that which he calls his "field of con- 
 sciousness." And yet if he will think intently in- 
 stead of blindly following the ruts of tradition, he 
 cannot but see instantly that there is no possible 
 knowledge of perceptive thoughts apart from 
 knowledge of objects perceived. 
 
 For asuredly to know an object we must know 
 at least some of its attributes. But the peculiar- 
 ity of sensations or perceptions is that they have 
 no distinctive attributes of their own, known to 
 us. We distinguish a particular sensation from 
 all others, not by its own attributes, but by means 
 of the attributes of the object revealed by that 
 sensation. For instance, is the sensation of heat 
 itself hot? Or the sensation of roundness, itself 
 of a round shape? Or when the sensation of red 
 "rises above the threshold of consciousness/' is 
 it painted of a red color? Or does the interior 
 sensation of a mal-odorous substance itself have 
 a bad smell? Such questions seem almost silly 
 iirtheir simplicity. And yet a clear apprehension 
 of the answer to them would work miracles of 
 renovation in our modern psychology. At least 
 it wuld prove to all what is here being contended 
 for: to-wit, that there is no possible knowledge 
 of our particular sensations apart from a knowl- 
 edge of their objects. 
 
 (2). Even those great groups into which sen- 
 
 sations are divided can be discrimmated from 
 each other only in the way above described. We 
 distinguish between sensations of sight, sound, 
 smell, etc., through attributes either of their ob- 
 jects or else of the organs of sense definitely lo- 
 cated in space, never through any non-spatial at- 
 tributes of the sensations themselves. The latter 
 remain and must ever remain shrouded in mys- 
 tery. 
 
 It may be objected that we can discriminate 
 between feelings of pain and of pleasure without 
 reference to any spatial quality. But that excep- 
 tion serves only "to prove the rule." For per- 
 ception proper occupies the neutral ground be- 
 tween pain and pleasure; whenever either of 
 these feelings is very intense, the perceptive func- 
 tions are retarded and impaired. 
 
 (3). Perceptions and spatial objects perceived 
 are so closely interrelated that without knowl- 
 edge of the latter, there is no posible knowledge 
 of the former ; and that for the simple reason that 
 perceptions have no discernible attributes of their 
 own by which they can be discriminated, known, 
 or even thought. That proved the remainder of 
 our task is easy. For perceptioons, as we have 
 seen, are the primary units out of which reason 
 develops all its other processes. By memory we 
 simply recall what was once perceived; by imag- 
 ination , voluntary or involuntary, our memories 
 
 !i 
 
 
390 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 are combined; by abstracting, judging, reason- 
 ing, we analyze and re-unite what was given in 
 perception. So strict is the inter-relation be- 
 tween all our mental activities. Hence we con- 
 clude that if the negation of the spatial object 
 logically involves the negation of the perceptive 
 act, it also involves the negation of all other 
 mental processes. The whole fabric of thought 
 dissolves. 
 
 (4). Carefully note, however, that our argu- 
 ment refers only to the spatial attributes of ob- 
 jects. Science is now fully convinced that all 
 merely qualitative relations are derivative from 
 and reducible to spatial or quantitative ones, al- 
 though it has not yet completed their reduction. 
 Therefore our task here is much simplified. We 
 have to prove only of the spatial attributes thai 
 their cancellation would make all knowledge im- 
 possible. 
 
 The splendid genius of Kant divined that the 
 problem of Space was the key to all metaphysics. 
 But perplexed by the obscurities enveloping the 
 space-idea, he worked out the easier, skeptical 
 solution of the problem which led to nothing but 
 nineteenth century agnosticism. But against 
 this view we have now raised an impassable bar- 
 rier. Every attempt to prove the ideality of the 
 spatial world has been shown to stultify itself 
 — from the start. For, it makes thoughts even 
 
 PERCEPTION. 
 
 391 
 
 more delusive and unknowable than things. In 
 nullifying the spatiality of the object it takes 
 away the only means of discriminating one 
 thought from another. Thus reason is converted 
 into chaos. Questions concerning existence or 
 non-existence, truth or falsehood become absurd. 
 Thinking has been rendered logically impossible. 
 The Appeal to Cotiseiousness. Do you then re- 
 pudiate, it may be asked, that testimony of con- 
 sciousness which gives so clear an insight into 
 our mental operations? No! but I repudiate 
 that worn-out trick of proving sheer assumptions 
 by alleging that we are conscious of them. 
 
 Such disingenuous follies do indeed seem to be 
 bringing consciousness into disrepute with many. 
 One of the most eminent of American psycholo- 
 gists wrote a few years ago: (i) **Every one as- 
 sumes "that we have direct introspective ac- 
 quaintance with our thinking activity as such. 
 Yet I must confess that for my part I cannot feel 
 sure of such a conclusion." But there is no need 
 of going to that extreme. In fact, the very thesis 
 we have just been contending for, instead of ig- 
 noring consciousness, rather defines it and de- 
 scribes its real functions. As the fine philological' 
 instinct of the race divined in framing the word, 
 ra;/sciousness is concomitant knowledge. In 
 
 (J) James. Pychology. (B. C.) p. 467 Also p. 215 216. 
 

 392 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 every perceptive act, for instance, knowledge is 
 gained of some object perceived and along with 
 it a collateral knowledge of the mental operation 
 of perceiving. Take away the first and the col- 
 lateral knowledge vanishes of course. And that 
 is largely the gist of our thesis: cancel the spa- 
 tial object and knowledge of thoughts is render- 
 ed impossible. 
 
 VI. 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 Nowhere, perhaps, has the fallacy of resem- 
 blance had such scope as in speculations con- 
 cerning self-consciousness. The difference be- 
 tween the two rival theories upon this subject 
 seems to reduce itself entirely to a choice of met- 
 aphors. On the one side we have the party of 
 Hume, who describes consciousness as a series 
 of ideas, a flowing ''stream" of thoughts. That 
 simile throws not one ray of light upon the sub- 
 ject; rather it seems to be devised for the special 
 purpose of concealing everything characteristic 
 of our consciousness. The figure of a flowing 
 stream as we have seen, is misleading even when 
 applied to a succession of events in time; but far 
 more so when the essence of each event is to 
 remember the rest. On the other side, we have 
 the Post-Kantian philosophy teaching another 
 doctrine, but by precisely the same metaphysical 
 method. Thus in Hegel's view, exclusive em- 
 phasis is laid upon the self, that is, the ego, "the 
 Idea" externalizing itself. But when is an idea 
 inside and when outside itself or anything else? 
 
394 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 So self is pictured as opposite to and confronting 
 itself, like a maiden admiring her image in a mir- 
 ror. And then after a while space itself is inter- 
 preted as this opposition between the ''empty 
 subject" and an "empty object." Thus the met- 
 aphor works both ways: first, consciousness is 
 explained by a supposed analogy to space, and 
 then space is interpreted by a supposed analogy 
 to consciousness. 
 
 But we have now passed beyond this pictorial 
 
 philosophy. We interpret consciousness not by 
 
 metaphors, but in terms of cause and effect. To 
 
 be conscious is to be aware of the causal relation 
 
 'between the thinker and his thought. 
 
 And here our fundamental law of knowledge 
 vindicates itself grandly. First, we can know 
 the cause only through its effects ; the ego by it- 
 self is but a half-thought, elusive, non-descript; 
 in vain we try to see what it looks like, to de- 
 scribe it as a simple substance, to interpret it 
 piclorially; it can be known only by its effects, 
 by what it docs. Ignorance of this fact led to 
 Kant's mistake when he declared the self to \A 
 "the emptiest of all notions," or when he en- 
 tered upon his famous but futile tilt against the 
 soul, conceived by him as ''a simple substance" 
 or thing. Precisely the same mistake is made by 
 hosts of people who doubt because they cannot 
 discover where the soul is and what it looks like. 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 395 
 
 But conversely effects can be known only when 
 related to their causes; thoughts without a think- 
 er are unintelligible, nonsensical. Ignoring this 
 is the mistake of Hume and his followers, who 
 interpret their thoughts as a "stream." Thoughts 
 without a thinker are abstractions abstracted 
 from nothing; they are like attributes without a 
 substance or notions detached from moving 
 things. 
 
 By thus reasoning, not in metaphors but in 
 terms of cause and effect, we have certainly made 
 some headway in disentangling the perplexities 
 investing the subject of self-consciousness. But 
 our task is but begun. Thoughts are dependent 
 upon a thinker; but w^e have found them to be 
 also dependent upon the spatial world. And it 
 is needful to know something of the relation be- 
 t^veen these two factors which co-operate to pro- 
 duce human experience. Let us try to thus com- 
 plete our theory. 
 
 The Antithesis of Feeling and Thought. The 
 pivot of any true theory of consciousness, it 
 seems to me, must be the following distinction: 
 The process of feeling and that of thought are 
 exactly antithetical. Feeling is automatic; its 
 only function is to bind like to like according to 
 the well known laws of Association ; without con- 
 scious effort, by a process as purely mechanical 
 as the growth of an organism, present sensations 
 
396 
 
 THE PHILOSOiPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 397 
 
 are fused with past experiences. But thought, 
 cri the contrary, is a conscious eflFort to arrest 
 this automatism, to rise above the mere spontane- 
 ity of suggestion, to abstract, to judge ,to dis- 
 cover causal relations, instead of yielding to the 
 blind, mechanical flow of associated feelings. 
 
 The tendency among experimental psycholo- 
 gists has been to ignore this antithesis, to see 
 only resemblance between feelings and thoughts. 
 M. Binet especially has shown, with great skill 
 and power, the close parallelism between the 
 structure of a syllogism and the fusion of present 
 sensations with past images which is constantly 
 taking place in all animal life. He wishes to 
 prove the virtual identity of the reasoning pro- 
 cess with this fusion of images; and yet he can- 
 not wholly hide from himself their essential dif- 
 ference. This idle flow of associated images, as 
 we see it in dreams or revery, making the oddest 
 leaps and the queerest conjunctions, is certainly 
 something very different from the steady, unde- 
 viatrng march of reason towards its conclusions. 
 M. Binet confesses it w^ith admirable candor. 
 "How does it happen," he asks, "that these ideal 
 recollections are not reasonings although they 
 have their structure? To tell the truth, I do not 
 know." (i). 
 
 The truth is that he has throughout his work 
 
 (1) Binet. The rnyehohtgy of Reasoning. 174. 
 
 mistaken the nature of logical inference. The 
 syllogism is not, as the ancient Greeks imagined, 
 the type of reasoning. On the contrary it is but 
 a subsidiary process for interpreting and apply- 
 ing the knowledge already gained through in- 
 duction. Its work is so entirely mechanical that 
 machines can do it as unerringly as human 
 minds, (i). There is no need, then, of being sur- 
 prised at the close correspondence between the 
 syllogism and the automatic process which Na- 
 ture has devised for all animal sentiency. 
 
 Furthermore, this supposed analogy is very 
 vague and far-fetched. But even if it were ten- 
 fold closer, than it really is, it could not hide the 
 opposition between thinking and the mere asso- 
 ciation of feelings. Thought dissolves what asso- • 
 ciation unites : for the blind automatic suggestion 
 of similarities it substitutes the search for causal 
 relations. Almost every page of this essay has 
 shown the opposition between the two processes. 
 
 The Functions of Consciousness, (i). This 
 antithesis between thought and feeling is further 
 proved by a scrutiny of consciousness. For, first, 
 there would be no need of consciousness if think- 
 ing consisted merely in automatic or mechanical 
 association. More than that it would be a posi- 
 tive impediment, preventing ease and rapidity of 
 performance. Common experience shows that to 
 
 (i) Jevons, Logic. 199. 
 
398 
 
 THE PHILOSO'PHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 399 
 
 be true of all movements which at first have to be 
 learned by conscious effort but afterwards be- 
 come automatic or unconscious. But no one 
 learns to think unconsciously. On the contrary^ 
 the more we keep every step of the proces clearly 
 and consciously before us, the better our think- 
 ing. 
 
 (2). Another most familiar fact is our experi- 
 ence of the immense cifori required to really 
 think. Despite our best endeavors the mind sud- 
 denly shoots off into some by-path of associa- 
 tion. Children are notoriously thoughtless; and 
 the vast majority of men soon give up the at- 
 tempt to think as altogether too laborious. The 
 reason is that to think requires a complete re- 
 versal of the natural tendency which we share 
 with other animals. That tendency is to let our 
 sensations and memories link themselves sponta- 
 neously together according to the mechanical 
 laws of similarity. 
 
 (3^. For the same reason thinking is never 
 continuous. As finite beings, we are too easily 
 swept off our feet by the under-tow of our animal 
 existence. And therefore in its struggle against 
 the blind automatism of the unconscious, 
 thought requires the aid of language. Those 
 who assert that there can be no thought without 
 words are probably mistaken; at least it seems 
 possible to perform some of the simplest acts of 
 
 judging or abstracting without the aid of speech. 
 But evidently these acts are too volatile to avail 
 much in the hard struggle of thought to maintain 
 itself against the automatism of feeling. There- 
 fore thought needs the aid of words, not merely 
 for purposes of communication, but as symbols 
 giving fixedness and persistence to our ideas, 
 which are created with difficulty and vanish with 
 ease into the stream of associated sensations and 
 memories. 
 
 (4). This activity of thought controls, partially 
 at least ,the lower automatic activity, arrests it, 
 reverses, reconstructs and transforms it. Con- 
 stant experience proves this fact of control, and 
 it is needless to enter here into the details of the 
 proof. My design is to show that in this now 
 completed view of the essential distinction — the 
 contrariety, even — between thoughts and the 
 stream of animal sentiency we have the first 
 dawn of a scientific psychology. 
 
 The Basis of Psychology. For thousands of 
 years the darkest of all dark questions has been 
 that of the relation of the thinker to his thoughts. 
 Even Oriental philosophy, otherwise a marvel of 
 unity, split upon that point. And the chief source 
 of this perplexity, apparently increasing instead 
 of diminishing, seems to be the failure to inquire 
 what thinking really is. That unknown, much 
 knowledge concerning the thinker could hardly 
 
400 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 be expected. Yet philosophy has never seriously 
 propounded to itself the question: What is the 
 nature, the essential function of thinking? 
 
 The result is that there has never been any 
 precise line of demarcation drawn between the 
 activities of the conscious self and those of the 
 physical organism. Self has been vaguely con- 
 ceived as some recollective force binding togeth- 
 er the disconnected moments of experience. But 
 animals also rem^ember: even the minutest of the 
 micro-organisms do. They seem to have other 
 traces of consciousness also; they are aware of 
 their pleasures and pains, they discriminate be- 
 tween spatial relations, they apparently exercise 
 choice, (i) And if a single cell of protoplasm can 
 accomplish all this, what specific function or rea- 
 son for existence is left for the psychical self as 
 distinguished from the physical organism? 
 
 But we have now established a precise line of 
 demarcation, even an essential opposition be- 
 tween the activity of the conscious self and the 
 stream of animal sentiencv. This activitv is re- 
 vealed in all human experience as a transforming 
 and, in a certain sense, creative power. It is the 
 effort to control the mechanism of passivity, to 
 convert sensations into reasoned perceptions, to 
 exalt feeling into emotion, to transmute causes 
 
 (i) Binet. The Psychic Life of Micro-orKanisms, by, 78. 109, et al. 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 401 
 
 into means and results into final causes, to create 
 a cosmos within out of materials blindly provided 
 from without. Such an activity is unknown to 
 other animals, and of it, therefore, the physical 
 organism cannot furnish even the hint of an ex- 
 planation. 
 
 The agent of this unique actiyity, this effort 
 to think, is the thinker, the will to know, the con- 
 scious self. 
 
 / 
 
VII. 
 
 THE CONSCIOUS CAUSE. 
 
 We have already proved that the essence of 
 modern scientific induction as distinguished from 
 vulgar empiricism, consists in its new conception 
 of force or energy as a causality acting with ab- 
 solute invariability for the production of the mo- 
 tions of the universe. At fir^t this conception 
 was but a mere hypothesis. It was an exceeding- 
 ly doubtful hypothesis also. Some phenomena 
 manifested a certain degree of uniformity- but the 
 most seemed to show nothing but incessant vari- 
 ation. But with the discovery of the first two 
 laws of motion this hypothesis began to be dem- 
 onstrated little by little. And the whole gist of 
 modern scientific progress may be said to lie in 
 the gradual verifying of this hypothesis of inva- 
 riableness and the applying of it to ever widening 
 circles of phenomena, until now it has become 
 that universal law known as the Conservation of 
 Energy. 
 
 But an enormous error has always dogged the 
 heels of this great scientific movement. That er- 
 ror is the assumption that what has been demon- 
 
 • . 
 
 \ 
 
 THE CONSCIOUS CAUSE. 
 
 403 
 
 strated concerning force or energy — causality 
 conceived as limited to one unvarying mode of 
 action — must be true concerning all causation; 
 in other words, that such a limitation is somehow 
 necessarily inherent in the very nature of a cause. 
 This assumption pervades modern speculation 
 through and through. It is the root of Kant's 
 celebrated antonomies. It is pervasive in all nine- 
 teenth century idealism which, absorbed in the 
 paradox of "phenomenality," lost all true ideal- 
 istic insight into causality. And yet upon its 
 very face it shows itself as an utterly unverifiable 
 assumption. .Certainly finite experience can nev- 
 er verify so vast a conclusion as that all causes 
 are necessarily limited to one invariable manner 
 of action. Even "intuition" cannot help us here; 
 for that certainly cannot be a universal and nec- 
 essary truth which had never been heard of three 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 Evidently this assumption is another case of 
 the fallacy of resemblance, of mere analogical 
 reasoning. Just as forces are pictured as things 
 somehow secreted within other things, so caus- 
 ality is pictured as something like these mystical 
 forces and acting accordingly. But discarding all 
 this, let us once more appeal to our Fundamental 
 Law of Knowledge. Instantly two transparent 
 and indubitable facts emerge. 
 
 The first fact is that there is nothing contradic- 
 
4(M 
 
 THE PHILOSClPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 tory in the idea of a dependent cause, of a thing 
 that is a cause in one relation and an effect in an- 
 other relation. Some philosophers have indeed 
 marvelled over this, but it is hard to understand 
 why. It seems no more mysterious than the 
 fact that a man may be at once a father and a 
 son. 
 
 The second and equally obvious fact is that 
 every idea of a dependent cause has implicit in it 
 the idea of an independent cause. Otherwise all 
 causal relationship would be subverted. MarV 
 further that this implicitness is not a mere hy- 
 pothesis deduced through some difficult regress 
 to the infinite. On the contrary, it is a fact evi- 
 dent upon bare inspection of inert things as 
 science has taught us to regard them; it is made 
 obscure only by that fallacy of resemblance 
 which leads so many to conceive of forces as act- 
 ual entities, like things and hidden inside of them. 
 
 The TJicisfic Argument. The above view, I 
 think, shows the validity of the once famous *'on- 
 tological argument" from the Idea of God to His 
 Existence. That argument, insufficiently stated 
 by the pre-scientific philosophy of the Middle 
 Ages and much ridiculed since, is in its essence, 
 profoundly true. Kant's witty criticism of it — 
 that the idea of "a hundred thalers in my pocket" 
 does not prove their actual existence there — has 
 been received with unbounded applause. But, 
 
 THE CONSCIOUS CAUSE. 
 
 40& 
 
 really, the blinded Samson of modern philosophy 
 was in that only making sport for the Philistines. 
 His reply has no logical force; for, there is an 
 utter disparateness between the two cases which 
 he treats as analogous. The idea of God, of free, 
 unlimited Causality, differs from all other ideas 
 in this one respect, that it is implicit in them all. 
 Therefore, if the idea of God is illusory, every 
 other possible idea is also illusory — a mere shell of 
 words enveloping a delusion. And if all ideas 
 are illusory, nothing exists; all thinking suffers 
 instant collapse. Thus we have again reached 
 the logically impassable barrier which reason 
 throws across the path to skepticism. 
 
 The ontological argument, therefore, despite 
 all ridicule, will stand. Every thought of things 
 or forces or of dependent causality in any other 
 form, logically involves the thought of some 
 free, uncoerced causality. Every act of true 
 thinking, as distinguished from the merely spon- 
 taneous flow of associated feelings, has implicit 
 in it the idea of God. Every such act of thinking 
 is literally an act of worship. 
 
 The cosmological argument is but a corollary 
 to the ontological one, rightly understood. The 
 criticism against it may easily be traced back to 
 the error considered in the first part of this sec- 
 tion — the asumption that causality cannot be in- 
 dependent, but must always act with absolute in- 
 
406 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 variability. Physical science has indeed proved 
 that all motions follow, without a shadow of 
 variableness, from their causes. But to assume 
 that their primary cause must produce effects 
 thus and only thus, is utter unreason. It is not 
 only unwaranted, but it subverts the very idea of 
 causality and thus makes all thinking impossible. 
 In fine, it is the ubiquitous fallacy of resemblance 
 again ; merely imagining that causes must bt : like 
 their effects , it argues that because the effects 
 are necessitated, therefore their causes must also 
 be necessitated. And yet upon this wanton as- 
 sumption all pantheism reposes. 
 
 Analogy of Divine and Human Activity. We 
 have before confessed — even boasted — that our 
 conclusions were but th-e logical setting forth and 
 verifying of what the human mind has always 
 vaguely divined. This is pre-eminently true in 
 regard to that argument from the analogy of di- 
 vine and human activity upon which theistic 
 faith has mainly rested and which even doubters, 
 like Kant and Mill, have received with favor. 
 That argument we fully accept; only we lift it 
 from the level of a mere analogy to that of a true 
 induction. 
 
 Induction, as we have seen, does not ignore 
 difference and reason from mere resemblance 
 alone. But it accounts for the difference, quanti- 
 tatively if it can ; and thus develops so far as pos- 
 
 THE CONSCIOUS CAUSE. 
 
 407 
 
 sible the vague resemblance into sameness or 
 identity. Let us follow this inductive method 
 here. For the dim analogy between the making 
 of a watch, for instance, and the creation of a uni- 
 verse, let us substitute that exact correspondence 
 which science has discovered between divine and 
 human thinking. "O God!" cried Kepler, *'l 
 think Thy thoughts after Thee." In other words 
 there is no essential diversity or opposition be- 
 tween the finite and the infinite Reason. True, 
 the former is interwoven with error; but that is 
 because our human thinking is intermittent, diffi- 
 cult, yielding readily to lower impulses and sug- 
 gestions, and thus ever lapsing into unreason. In 
 fine, the difference is purely quantitative — the 
 difference between the interrupted energ\' of the 
 finite and the continuous, unlimited energy of the 
 Infinite. 
 
 The Reigfu of Law. But there is a still closer 
 correspondence between the activities of the hu- 
 man and the divine will. Both are the outcome 
 of obedience to self-imposed laws of reason and 
 righteousness. To speak of the Infinite as being 
 compelled from without to yield such obedience, 
 would be manifestly absurd. And that man also 
 is very far from being compelled to yield this 
 obedience, is too painfully evident from all his 
 history. It is hardly needful to add that here also 
 the difference between the divine and the human 
 

 "T?:'--' 
 
 ;S;t. 
 
 408 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 is purely quantitative. The conformity of the 
 Infinite to moral law is continuous and eternal; 
 that of man is fitful, interrupted by frequent 
 lapses. 
 
 Note, however, that even these human varia- 
 tions do not in the least interfere with the univer- 
 sal reign of law. If man thinks — in what we have 
 seen to be the only full and true sense of that 
 term — he freely conforms to those higher laws 
 upon which all the lower laws depend. If he 
 ceases to think, if he does not will to control the 
 mechanism of impulse and suggestion, he yields 
 himself to the dominion of their mechanical laws. 
 In either case, the reign of law is not for an in- 
 stant broken. 
 
 
 ^. 
 
 '. *:-.; 
 
 
 '-■■-.:i ''^s 
 
 
/ 
 
 f 
 
 tii 
 
 I 
 
 
 ^* 
 
 ,! 
 
 ^i: 
 
 \ 
 
 N